


super soul

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Trope Subversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: Phil has spent his whole life believing that meeting his soulmate will give his life the meaning he’s been looking for.Then he meets Dan.
Relationships: Cornelia Dahlgren/Martyn Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 68
Kudos: 436
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2019





	super soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CapriciousCrab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapriciousCrab/gifts).



> merry christmas amy <3

Something weird plays from the record player in the corner of the shop. Phil would never actually say that out loud, but in his own head he can say it and no one can scold him for it. It’s weird. He shouts to Cornelia over the sound of it. “What is this?”

She’s sat next to Martyn in one of the brightly coloured sofas that furnish the cafe, drinking a latte she didn’t pay for. Perks of dating the owner. Of being _bonded_ to the owner.

“Björk,” she shouts back. “You like?”

Phil shrugs. It’s the politest way he’s come up with to communicate that no, he doesn’t like it, but he respects her enough not to say so. Her own music is a lot better than this. He’s glad he can tell her she’s good without having to lie. He’s really got no talent for lying.

She leaves Martyn and gets up from the couch to come sit on the counter beside Phil instead. It’s a slow day and all the customers in the shop have already been attended to, not that it would matter anyway. Martyn had decided the day he took over running this place that the vibe would be chill, hence the whole ‘hiring his brother as a barista thing,’ even though Phil has clumsy hands and just about zero experience working retail.

He’s more or less gotten the hang of making coffee over the last year. He still struggles with getting the cappuccino foam right, but nepotism wins out over everything in the Lester family. And people don’t frequent Café Vinyl because the coffee is better than anywhere else. It isn’t. It probably isn’t even as good as Costa or Starbucks. 

What it is is a hipster mecca. The furniture is all thrifted. The art is avant-garde. There’s no dress code and the coffee is all fair trade and organic. They have every conceivable milk alternative and three milk crates full of records that people can peruse and play at their leisure on the old turntable Cornelia’s grandfather gave her. 

Phil’s phone dings in his pocket. He pulls it out and Cornelia leans over his shoulder to look.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

She ignores his thinly veiled request for privacy. “Is it a guy?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Well check!”

He rolls his eyes and swipes his phone open. Turns out it _is_ a guy. He tilts his phone so she can see that it’s a message from someone on one of the many dating apps he’s signed up to. He doesn’t actually give a toss about privacy. 

“Open it!” she squeaks. 

Somehow he’s still got enough hope left to be disappointed when he reads the message. _top or bottom?_

He shoves his phone back into his pocket. Cornelia clicks her tongue. “Why are men so nasty?”

“I wish I knew,” he says. “Or maybe I should be wishing I wasn’t an exception.”

She frowns, brushing an overgrown red curl out of her eye. “Don’t say that.”

He shrugs. “I’d probably be a lot happier if I was content with meaningless hookups while I waited.”

“I don’t think you would be,” she says. “And you don’t really wanna meet him on an app for sleazy gits anyway, do you?”

“I don’t care where I meet him, I just want to meet him. Maybe I should stop ignoring the sleazy gits. There’s no rule that says my soulmate isn’t a sleazy git.”

Cornelia looks proper horrified. “There is a rule. I’ve just made it.”

“If only you had the authority to actually make the rules.”

“Phil.” She levels him with a look that reminds him of the years she’s got on him. “Your soulmate will be a man worthy of sharing your life. You don’t have to keep looking for him under rocks.”

He doesn’t believe that, but he smiles and says, “Yes ma’am.”

He believes in the system. He knows it works because he’s seen it work, but it can’t work for him if he doesn’t find the one. And at this point he’s willing to look just about anywhere.

A customer comes in and Phil makes sure to look him directly in the eye as he takes the order, but he doesn’t feel anything. Nothing moves inside him; it’s just another guy to cross off the never ending list. He takes the guy’s money and makes him his oat milk latte.

He feels Cornelia’s eyes on him as he watches the guy walk out the door. “What?” he asks, cleaning off the steam wand. 

“What what?”

He rolls his eyes. “Stop drawing attention to my patheticness.”

“You’ll find him just as soon as you stop looking.”

“So you say.”

“I do say.” She hops off the counter and walks over to him. She reaches up and smoothes a finger over his forehead. “You’re just a baby, Phil, why are you in such a hurry to settle down?”

He laughs bitterly. He can’t help it. “I’m in my mid twenties, Corn. And I don’t care about settling, I just want…” He trails off.

She raises her eyebrows in question, but at that moment Björk stops playing and Phil latches onto the excuse to bail on this particular conversation. She seems to understand that he’s not up for a heart to heart today, letting him go without a fight and rejoining Martyn on the sofa. She leans back against him and he drapes his arm across her chest. 

Phil crouches down to flip through the milk crate record collection. There’s got to be at least one ‘90s indie rock album in here somewhere. After a few minutes of perusing, he’s pleasantly surprised to find that Cornelia has stocked them up nicely, and not all of it is Icelandic and experimental. He chooses a Smiths album and puts it on. She beams at him. “Good choice.”

“Is there anything in here you wouldn’t call a good choice?”

She shakes her head. “I like everything.”

“You like Glowing Palms, so that checks out.”

Martyn flips him off, but he’s grinning. His recent foray into making music has been successful despite his sound being an utterly bizarre mish-mash of EDM and tropical and probably other things Phil doesn’t even understand. It’s not surprising, though. Martyn has been lucky ever since he bonded with Cornelia, and not just because they’re well suited.

And _that’s_ the real reason Phil feels so pressed to find the person the universe has decided is his soul’s mate. It’s more than just finding a partner. It’s finding purpose.

Martyn and Cornelia reek of contentment. They project an aura of fulfillment that makes Phil’s stomach roll with envy. He’s never felt purposeful a day in his life.

His aimlessness didn’t feel quite so severe when he was up at York. He could go to class and earn degrees and ignore the fear of not being able to find his place in the world. He had enough freedom to feel adult, but not enough to feel any of the pressures. Now he feels them. He’d go back if he could, but six years was already pushing it. He’s got qualifications coming out of his eyeballs. He’s got the safety net of supportive parents willing to help float him until he gets his shit figured out. 

He’d really like to get it figured out, and he reckons finding the one would go a long way towards accomplishing that goal. He wanders back over to his spot behind the register and tries not to be obvious about watching his brother canoodle with Cornelia. Morrissey’s melancholy baritone fills the shop, juxtaposing with the scene of pure happiness playing out on that stupid yellow sofa. A part of Phil wants to hate them for having everything he wants, but he doesn’t. Not even a little bit. If anything it just strengthens his resolve. He’ll find it someday, and when he does, everything else will slot into place. 

-

It’s cold outside. When he locks up the shop at the end of the day and pockets the keys, the air bites at his hands. He shoves them into his coat and shrugs his shoulders up as high as they’ll go, bracing himself for the walk back to his flat. It’s a short walk, but he’s a baby, and he didn’t dress right for late November. 

Martyn and Corn had taken off a few hours earlier. They’re busy people with full lives outside of keeping Phil company, even if the shop is a nice place to kill time. Sometimes Martyn will help out if it gets busy, but it almost never does. Most of the time he just sits on the sofa and messes with music stuff on his laptop. Phil knows he’s always got projects on the go, but he never really remembers the details. More often than not Cornelia will be with him, writing music or reading books or manning the record corner like the café’s own private DJ. 

Their real lives happen at night, at clubs and recording studios and artsy parties. Phil’s grateful for the company during the day, but he doesn’t fit with who they are when they’re living their dreams. He’s not a partier. He doesn’t really know anything about music or art, and he’s not even all that good at meeting new people. 

He kicks his shoes off on the mat once he’s home and hangs his coat on the hook by the door. He cranks the heat a bit and goes to his room to change, then flops on the sofa with a blanket and his phone ready to order a takeaway. Cooking for himself happens very rarely unless it can be done in the microwave or go straight from freezer to oven. Tonight he hasn’t even got that in him. He orders Indian and eats it while watching a film. 

Film is art, he thinks to himself idly as he shovels naan into his face. He knows about film, so maybe he does know a little about art. He’s not _entirely_ uncultured, although tonight his film of choice is a fiftieth viewing of the enduring classic, Speed. He just wanted something comforting. 

He’s warm and cozy and full and half asleep when his phone starts ringing, so he answers instinctively without even checking to see who’s on the other end. He croaks out a, “Hello,” and hears his best friend Ian laughing in his ear.

“Mate, come on. It’s not even ten o’clock.”

“M’not asleep.” He sits up and lowers the volume on the telly. “Technically.”

“You’re free as a bird, Phil, you should be out living it up for the rest of us.”

“Mreh.”

“A disgrace to bachelors everywhere, you are.”

“I worked all day,” Phil says defensively. “I’m tired.”

“Go out. Do something irresponsible, please. I’m over here drowning in nappies and bedtime stories. I need to live through you vicariously.”

“I ordered takeaway from the expensive Indian place even though I make minimum wage,” Phil says. “That’s pretty irresponsible if you ask me.”

Ian sighs. “Tell Martyn to pay you better.”

“It’s still more money than I actually work to earn. My job is so easy.”

“Get a different one.”

Phil huffs a laugh. “Did you ring me to make feel rubbish about myself? Because it’s working.”

“No, sorry. I rang because I’m bored, but your life sounds even more boring than mine and that’s just sad.”

“You’re not bored,” Phil tells him. “You can’t be.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

Phil doesn’t answer. He wishes he hadn’t said anything, but he’s not fully awake enough yet not to just say the first thing that pops into his head.

“Oh,” Ian says after a moment of awkward silence. “The bonding thing.”

“Forget it.”

“Okay.”

Phil sighs in annoyance. At himself or at Ian, he isn’t even sure. 

“I was taking the piss,” Ian says. “You’re fine.”

“I’m not fine,” Phil argues. “I’m boring and sad and whatever else you said.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You did. That’s actually exactly what you said.”

“Well…” Ian trails off. 

Phil laughs. “Wow, mate. Thanks.”

“Look, I’m just an idiot, okay? You know this about me.”

Phil just grunts his acknowledgement.

“But you’re an idiot too,” Ian adds.

“Oi.”

“Well you are,” Ian insists. “You still think bonding is some kind of fairytale magic bullshit that’ll solve all your problems.”

“Won’t it?”

“No, man. It won’t.”

“So you didn’t get happier after you met Lauren?”

“I…”

Phil is annoyingly smug, even to his own ears. “Yeah, thought so.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Martyn is a different person since he met Cornelia. And you were a different person once you met Lauren. In a good way.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Ian says. “It’s not like— It’s not just…” He sighs. “I don’t know how to explain it. You just have to see for yourself.”

Phil snorts. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

“You’re really good at making me sound like a wanker.”

“That’s because you are one.”

Ian laughs. “Okay, I walked right into that one.”

Phil lies back and rests his head against the armrest of the sofa. “I know I’m sad and boring, yeah? I know that. I just feel this… this weird, like, uncertainty. Like I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”

“And you think bonding is the answer?”

Phil shrugs. “I’ve never seen anything to the contrary.”

“Lauren didn’t, like, solve all my problems. I still have problems.”

“What about your power?”

“Mate. No one calls them that. They’re not _powers_.”

Phil bristles defensively. “That’s what we called them growing up.”

“It’s just super inaccurate. It’s not like I got strength or telepathy or even something cool like Martyn’s luck. I just got really good at math.”

Phil grits his teeth against his annoyance. “You’re going to pretend finding your power didn’t make your life better? You’re an engineer now. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. A lot cooler than a freaking barista.”

“I mean… no. It was helpful. But it wasn’t like I couldn’t have made it through without it. I was already in engineering school before I even met Lauren, you know that. And you’ve got a fucking master’s degree and then some. You’re not a barista because you can’t get a better job, you’ve just chosen not to. You have to, like, take a little bit of responsibility for yourself, mate.”

“I’m too tired to be cross with you, but I want to be.”

Ian’s voice softens. “Don’t be cross. I’m sorry. I didn’t ring to make you feel bad. I just think you don’t give yourself enough credit. Or like, any credit whatsoever.”

“Maybe I should’ve just stayed in school forever,” Phil mutters. “I was happy in school.”

“You can be happy now. Go out. Meet people. Do fun things. Stop moping.”

“I’m not moping,” Phil says in a way that makes it very clear that he is, in fact, moping.

Ian laughs at him. “Okay, man. Whatever you say.”

-

He tries to take Ian’s advice. He stops saying no when Martyn and Cornelia invite him to shows. He has long, lewd conversations with sleazy gits on his dating apps. He doesn’t send any naughty pictures of his own, but he receives a few that make him hot and hard in the middle of the night. He goes to a gay bar and makes out with a guy with red hair and big arms even though he knows it’s not going to lead anywhere. 

It’s fun, but it doesn’t make him feel any different, really. It still feels like biding time. Only now he has hangovers in the morning.

On this particular morning he is awoken by the sound of his phone ringing. It’s jarring, and he answers it just to make the noise stop. “What.”

“Good morning to you too,” Cornelia says, sounding far too chipper for someone Phil knows for a fact was up until the wee hours in a loud, dark club. He knows because he was there too, nursing a beer that tasted exactly how he’d imagine urine tastes and fantasizing about going home and watching a movie in his underwear. 

Phil pries his eyes open against the tiny sliver of grey light peeking through the crack in the curtains. “Are you a vampire?” 

“Phil, that makes no sense. If I was a vampire I’d be asleep right now.”

“Oh yeah.” 

“Dare I ask how you’re feeling in this late morning hour?”

Phil groans as he forces himself up into a sitting position. “I’m too old to be staying out all night drinking.”

“You barely drank. And you’re a baby.”

“I think you’re a bad influence. Also I’m scared for your future children if you think it’s okay to take babies to underground raves.”

“Oh, I won’t be having children,” she says bluntly. 

Phil suddenly feels very awake and very stupid. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s alright. It’s not a sensitive subject or anything. I’m actually surprised the topic’s never come up between us before. I just don’t want kids.”

Phil bites back the question that lingers on his tongue, the question of how Martyn feels about kids. That’s definitely none of Phils business, especially not in relation to how Cornelia feels about them. 

“I feel awkward,” he admits. He needs to stop answering his phone when he’s not awake enough to properly filter himself.

“Why? Does it make you feel uncomfortable for an adult woman not to want children?”

“No!” he says insistently. “I just feel like an ass for assuming.”

She giggles. “You know, there’s a saying about that.”

“Oh, shut up,” he mutters. “I know.” He really does. He’s been on the receiving end of a lot of stupid assumptions himself. If he had a pound for every time someone asked him if he’s bonded with a nice girl yet… 

“I’ll forgive you if you spend the day with me.”

“Sounds terrible.” He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and winces when they touch the cold floor. “Why are you slumming it with the baby Lester?”

“Someone has to run the shop,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Let it be Mar for once.”

“So you’re taking pity on me. Like a lost puppy or something.”

“Or like a beloved friend?”

He can’t help a little smile at that. Maybe it should be strange how close he’s gotten to his brother’s soulmate, but mostly it just feels nice. It’s almost like her bond with Martyn extends outwards a little, like it touches him a little just by association. He knows that’s not it, though. It’s just her. Martyn got lucky.

That makes Phil laugh. Martyn and lucky are basically synonymous at this point.

“What’s so funny about that?” Cornelia asks, and Phil is suddenly reminded that he’s still in the middle of conversing with her.

“Nothing, sorry. Just thinking.”

“Always thinking,” she says fondly. “Get dressed and meet me at the shop. Martyn will have a coffee waiting for you.”

He does, a nice big one with whipped cream on the top. He even refrains from taking the piss for it; Cornelia must have told him to be extra nice today. Phil hadn’t thought he’d been acting pathetic last night, but maybe he had. 

“What’s on the agenda?” He scoops some cream off with his tongue and Martyn shakes his head in silent disappointment. 

“We need to freshen up the selection,” she says, gesturing to the record corner. “It’s called Café Vinyl, we can’t let the vinyl part be lame.”

Phil gives her an incredulous look. “Now it makes even less sense that you’re bringing me and not him.”

She shrugs. “It just feels right. You spend more time here than anyone, you should be allowed to pick at least a few albums you enjoy.”

“Do you think they have Toxic on vinyl?”

She laughs. Martyn does too. “A modern classic, to be sure.” 

The walk is long enough that Phil is relieved when they’re finally stood outside the bright red shopfront of Reckless Records. He opens the door quickly and sighs as the warm air envelops him. It smells slightly musty inside, but in a nice way. There’s something nostalgic about being in a place that’s full of old things, things that have been previously treasured. 

Cornelia is immediately drawn to the section marked _ska_. Phil’s got little to no interest in that, or at least he doesn’t think he does. He’s not entirely sure what ska even is. He meanders aimlessly for a while, running his fingers over the records and enjoying the atmosphere of the place. There are only a few other people milling about, all of them quiet, heads bowed down in concentration as they flip through the stacks. Phil doesn’t know exactly what plays from the speakers, but he recognizes it as something punk-y.

Eventually he happens upon the pop section. He’d been kidding about the Britney Spears thing before, but now that he’s here, he can’t help checking. 

To his delighted amusement, it’s there. He makes a weird little squeaky sound and pulls it out, Britney’s face bathed in pink on the cover. He’s imagining Martyn’s future reaction to Phil blasting this in the cafe when someone who is apparently stood right beside Phil says, “Good choice, mate.”

Phil looks up. The record falls from his hands as his eyes lock onto those of the approving stranger. Something electric moves through his whole body, starting from his head and shooting down his arms and legs. For a moment he can’t breathe. His chest squeezes in on itself and then seems to expand with warmth before all the air trapped in his lungs comes whooshing out in a forceful burst. He hasn’t even really processed it when the man with whom he’s apparently just bonded says, “Fuck.”

Fuck is right, Phil thinks. Fuck. This guy is his fucking soulmate. Phil is about to smile and reach out when the guy says, “Of course. Of fucking course.”

He doesn’t sound happy. In fact he sounds about as far away from happy as a person could possibly be.

And then he bolts.

No one has ever accused Phil of being quick on the uptake. His reflexes are probably slower than the average person’s. Whatever the antithesis of nimble is, he’s that. But today, perhaps for the first time ever, his body is serving him well. The guy hasn’t gotten more than a few feet away before Phil starts chasing him.

Out of the record store. Down the pavement. Around a corner. He doesn’t care that it must look absolutely insane to passers by. He doesn’t care that Cornelia is probably stood in the shop wondering what the hell just happened. He doesn’t care that this stranger would be well within his rights to call the police or turn around and sock Phil right in the nose. He doesn’t care. He’s not letting his future get away.

The muscles in his calves are burning. There’s a stitch in his side so intense he feels like he might actually die, but he doesn’t stop. He’s chasing a stranger down the streets of London with wild abandon, and he’s not going to stop until he’s sure said stranger won’t get away.

Somehow he finds the strength to shout, “Please!” He meant to say ‘stop,’ but there’s probably so little oxygen reaching his brain that he’s glad he managed to form an actual word and not just a jumble of incoherent noises.

Without warning, he slams into something both hard and soft at the same time, and then both he and his unwilling mate are falling to the ground. Hard. Painfully.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the guy says. Phil doesn’t say anything. He’s far too winded, and he’s pretty sure he just scraped all three layers of skin off his right elbow. 

But still he manages to scramble to his feet and hold out his hand to help the guy up.

“Fuck off,” the guy says, swatting Phil’s hand away harshly. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil manages to gasp. He buckles over, clutching his stomach. He’s definitely going to be sick. And probably pass out. And this guy, this person he’s been waiting for is going to get away and Phil will have to spend his entire life searching. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you actually insane?”

“No,” Phil pants, crouching down and curling in on himself. He wouldn’t have thought it possible for a person to be _this_ horrifyingly unfit. “I’m not, I swear.”

The guy is still sat on the ground, making no apparent attempt to move from his spot on the pavement. “I can’t believe you chased me.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil repeats. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—” He stops to heave some more air into his body. “I didn’t want you to get away.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Phil gives up on the whole ‘standing upright’ thing and joins the guy in sitting on the cold dirty ground. There are people walking past them and staring blatantly, but Phil’s quite sure he’s never cared less what people think of him than he does right now. 

“Did you not feel it?” Phil asks. He’s finally getting a look at the guy, though the immediacy of his terror is preventing him from having any coherent opinions of the face that looks back at him.

“God, shut up, fuck.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. It’s like a reflex. 

The guy buries his head in his hands. “Fuck,” he says. “ _Fuck_.”

“I’m really not that bad,” Phil says quietly. He’s not sure what comes over him. “Most people like me once they get to know me.”

The guy looks up at Phil, clearly distressed. There’s a mess of brunette waves on top of his head and a pair of headphones pulled down around the back of his neck. “What?”

Phil actually manages an awkward little conciliatory smile. “I might grow on you. If you, you know…” He shrugs. “If you don’t like the look of me now.”

“That’s not—” The guy scrambles to his feet. “I can’t do this. I’m not doing this. You… you made a mistake.”

Phil knows in his heart - he knows in his _soul_ that that’s not true. He didn’t make a mistake, and this guy knows it. For once, Phil doesn’t doesn’t doubt himself even in the slightest. “You felt it.”

The guy shakes his head, taking a slow step backwards and then another. “I didn’t.”

Phil winces at the pain in his elbow as he pushes himself up to stand. He hates to press, but he really can’t just let this guy walk away. “I know you did.”

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“How can you say that?” Phil asks. “You’re my—”

“Shut up. Don’t fucking say it.” He turns around. “Don’t follow me.”

Phil’s stomach sinks. He’s actually going to lose whatever this could have been. He can’t chase this guy again. There’s no law that says people who’ve bonded have to be together. He has no legal right to stalk this man.

So he stops following. He forces his feet to stay planted on the ground, but he calls out, “I work at Cafe Vinyl. I’m there pretty much every day, and if I’m not, my brother is.”

The guy doesn’t turn back around, but he does stop.

“My name is Phil. I’m not insane. I’m sorry I chased you. If you change your mind, I’ll be waiting.”

The guy walks away. Phil watches until he’s gone. Then he goes home.

-

He cries. He cries a lot. He cries like he hasn’t since he was a child. He feels like an idiot for crying, but he can’t stop it. Cornelia rings and texts all day. Phil ignores it. Martyn texts and Phil ignores that too, until Mar threatens to ring their mum. Phil texts back: _i’m not dead. leave me alone._

Something inside him feels like it’s breaking. He can’t rightly tell if it’s real or if it’s just him being over dramatic. He has moments of clarity where it seems obvious that things will be okay, but they never last more than a minute or two before his thoughts circle back around to hopelessness. Waiting for the one felt torturous. Being rejected by him is something else entirely. 

Does that even happen? Is he the first miserable sod in the universe to be bonded and alone? What happens now? Will he still get his power? Is he ruined for relationships forever? 

He knows he could find at least a few answers by simply reaching under his bed and pulling out his laptop, but he’s so terrified of having his fears confirmed that he just lies there in bed like a pathetic overgrown slug and lets the moisture leak from his stupid eyeballs. Part of him hopes Cornelia has figured it out and told Martyn. He hopes one of them will show up and make him tea and biscuits and let him cry into their hair. He hopes his mum will sense his pain telepathically and hop on the first plane south to come and rescue him. She got mum powers, and right now he needs them.

But not enough to actually ask for them. 

Eventually he can’t ignore the insistent strain on his bladder any longer and he has to roll out of bed to relieve himself. He stares at himself in the mirror afterwards and wonders what the guy saw there that repelled him enough to ignore the literal bonding of their souls. His nose is maybe a bit beaky. He’s paler than most people. He hadn’t bothered putting his contact lenses in that morning. Were little things like that really abhorrent enough to ignore a sign from the universe that they’re meant to be together?

He’s never hated himself before, not even as a closeted and confused teenager trying desperately to convince himself he could be attracted to girls if he just tried a little harder. Never - not until tonight. 

He pulls his phone from his pocket. There are quite a few people he could reach out to. He’s not stupid enough to deny that he’s loved, it just doesn’t feel like enough tonight. Tonight he wants to feel wanted. 

He opens up the app he was daft to download in the first place, the one on which he was never going to find anything but sleazy gits. He finds the guy who’d sent a photo that had him touching himself despite his conviction that such things were beneath him. He scrolls through their conversation and finds the photo. 

It’s a nice cock. Phil types _hey_ and presses send.

It’s almost like the bloke was just waiting. He texts back immediately, something stupid and vaguely dirty, and Phil goes along with it. He goes along with it until the guy says: _what are you up to tonight? wanna meet up?_

He stares at the words for a full minute, the thoughts in his head like the ball in a game of pong. He wants to, but no, he doesn’t. He could do it, but no, he can’t. It would be fun, but no, it wouldn’t. 

Maybe he should do it. He bites his lip. Why shouldn’t he do it? 

He closes the app and finds Ian’s number in his contacts before he can do something terrible like say _sure._

Ian doesn’t answer until the fourth ring, and the gravel of his voice says he’d most definitely been asleep. “Phil?”

“Hi.”

“Mate. D’you know what bloody time it is?”

“Uh… no, actually, I don’t.”

“It’s very-fucking-late o’clock.”

“Sorry,” Phil says with no conviction whatsoever. “Just fancied a chat.”

“Fancied a chat.” Ian’s voice is dripping with incredulity. “At half one in the morning.”

“Crap, it’s that late?”

“Mate. What do you want?”

Phil breathes out slowly. “I want you to tell me if I should go hook up with some random guy right now or not.”

Ian doesn’t say anything right away. Phil can hear rustling on the other end of the phone, and then a creaking that he imagines is his mate climbing out of the bed he shares with his wife as quietly as he can. A few moments later Ian hisses, “Are you fucked?”

“Not yet.”

Ian snorts. “God, who are you and what have you done with Phil?”

“I had the worst day ever,” Phil says. “Like I think literally ever.”

“Look, man, I care and shit, but I’ve got work in the morning.”

“You told me to go out and meet people and have fun.”

“I did. You’re right.”

“So. I did that. And now I think maybe my heart is broken.”

“What?”

Phil crosses his arms over his chest protectively. Suddenly he’s wondering why he thought talking about this was a good idea. He hisses when his raw elbow rubs against his shirt. “I bonded today,” he blurts.

“Oh fuck off.”

“I did.”

“Phil it’s the middle of the night, I’m really not—”

“It happened this afternoon. I was out with Corn and I saw this guy and I felt like I’d been hit by lightning and then squeezed until my lungs popped.”

Silence, and then, “Fuck.”

“That’s what he said,” Phil murmurs miserably.

“Did this actually happen? For real, you’re not taking the piss?”

“It happened. And then he ran away.”

“No he didn’t.”

“He did. And I chased him.”

“Phil, for fuck’s sake. Why didn’t you ring me earlier?”

“I was crying,” Phil admits easily, his dignity is but a distant memory. He can almost picture Ian shaking his head.

“Who is this clown? Why’d he run?”

Phil feels emotion threatening to bubble up again. “I don’t know. Never seen him before.”

“Well he’s a fucking cunt, so maybe you dodged a bullet.”

Phil’s not sure how to respond to that, but Ian saves him having to. “Oh shit, Em’s awake, I hear her crying.”

“Okay. Thanks for—”

“Ring me tomorrow, we’ll talk more. Don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”

“Define stupid.”

“Stupid would be going out and fucking a stranger because you’re sad,” Ian says bluntly. “That’s definitely not what I meant by meet people and have fun.”

“You told me to do something irresponsible.”

“Well I was an idiot. We’ve talked about this.”

“I met my soulmate today,” Phil says, the flatness in his voice concerning even to his own ears. “And he literally ran away as fast as he could.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ian says. “I promise. You’re going to be alright, Phil. Ring me tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah, alright. Bye.”

He hangs up and reopens the app, hoping his preferred sleazy git is still there. _sorry, can’t, but i can give you the next best thing._

Phil goes back to his room. He climbs into bed and settles himself under the duvet, sliding a hand inside his boxers. He touches himself until it starts to feel really good, then pulls his pants down and takes a photo of his own. He hits send before he has a chance to second guess himself.

Five minutes later his phone dings and he swipes it open to photographic proof that someone out there finds him attractive. Someone in the world got off because of what he looks like. It’s crude and base and he’ll probably feel weird about it in the light of day, but for now it works to smooth the jagged edges of his insecurity enough for him to close his eyes and fall asleep. 

-

He spends the next few weeks in a fog. Nearly every waking minute is spent at the café, from open to close every single day. Martyn stops arguing after a while, and Phil can tell Cornelia makes an extra effort to stop by as often as she possibly can. He doesn’t tell them what happened, but they know. The air is thick with unanswered questions. 

He decides he’ll play every single album and single in the collection. He decides he’ll learn about music so he doesn’t feel like an alien in Martyn and Cornelia’s world. The turntable and its sound become his constant companions, and at night his dreams are full of the songs he’d heard during the day. 

There is more in his dreams, anxieties and rejections and hazy things that leave him feeling unsettled when he wakes. Mornings dawn with his chest aching and the unmistakable feeling of something missing, an emptiness that he can’t even be sure isn’t a figment of his disappointment. It makes him feel crazy, and the more time that passes, the more he starts to believe that he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he’d imagined the whole thing. 

Nights are spent watching films until his eyes are too heavy to keep his kids from obstructing the view. He watches every genre, every era, every language. He wants to fill his head with stories that aren’t his. He wants to drown himself in other people’s feelings so he doesn’t have to feel his own.

Every once in a while there are moments of sanity, flashes of recognition for just how ridiculous it is to mourn the loss of a person who’s had zero effect on his life. A person about whom he knows absolutely nothing. It’s not right. He’s better than that. And yet, apparently he isn’t. 

Ian tries his best, and Phil makes an effort to answer when he rings. It’s nice that someone cares, but his assurances feel so hollow. Ian is bonded. He’s happy. Lauren hadn’t taken one look and run, and no matter how good a friend Ian is, it just isn’t enough to convince Phil that he hasn’t lost something he can never get back.

-

His alarm goes off at five in the morning and he’s grateful; It interrupts a dream he isn’t sad to leave in the recesses of his subconscious. He throws on jeans and one of his many uni hoodies, brushes his teeth and heads out.

Every day the air feels a little colder. It’s still dark outside and he can see swirls of mist every time he exhales. The city is quiet at this hour, or as quiet as London can get. He won’t get many customers until people start waking up and making their way to work, but it doesn’t matter. He can make drinks for himself and listen to music and wait.

Because he can’t pretend he isn’t waiting. 

He turns on the lights and throws his jacket on the blue sofa. It’s warm inside, and he shudders as he walks over to the record corner. He chooses an album by someone called Sonic Youth and puts it on. Melancholy guitar fills the shop. He’s not sure he’s heard the song before, but the sound of it is so distinctly ‘90s that he loves it instantly. Those were better days, when he was a child and nothing really mattered. He was so free then.

The morning passes slowly. Most people don’t choose the niche coffee place when they’re in a rush and they know a corporate chain is just a block further down, so it never really gets busy enough for Phil to forget himself and his situation, but it’s still better to be here than anywhere else. Cornelia rings and asks if he wants company, but he can tell she’s just being nice. She’s probably got a long list of things she’s been neglecting in favour of making sure her almost brother in law isn’t crying into the espresso. He tells her he’s fine and almost manages to make it sound believable. Sometimes company is nice and sometimes it just means he has to put effort into his brave face. 

His face is decidedly neutral when it happens. He’s leaning back against the counter and watching people as they walk past the windows of the shop when the door opens and the guy he’s been waiting for every day for weeks just walks in and says, “Hey.” Like it’s nothing. 

Phil says, “Hi,” and then, “What can I get for you?”

“Oh. Do you not—”

“I recommend anything with caramel,” Phil interrupts. “And absolutely nothing with hemp milk.” 

The guy actually cracks a smirk. “Okay. Well why don’t you just surprise me then.”

Phil is impressed with himself. On the inside he’s having a full on nuclear meltdown, but somehow he’s managing to keep it contained. “You still have to pay,” he says. “Just because…” He gestures vaguely between them. “Anyway. My brother owns the place, I just work here.”

The guy’s expression changes. “So you do remember.”

“Can I get a name for the cup?” His heart is going a mile a minute. He can barely hear his own voice over its thunderous pounding.

“It’s Dan.”

Phil makes no move to write it on the cup. He doesn’t even have a sharpie in his hand. “Dan. I dunno if you remember, but I’m—”

“Phil.”

His stomach does nervous somersaults at that. He’s not the only one who’s been thinking about what happened. “Right, yeah. Phil.”

Dan hands him a tenner. “Make it as massive as possible, please. I need the caffeine.”

“Oh?” Phil counts out the change as quickly as he can and hands it back.

Dan drops it in the tip jar. “Been getting even shitter sleep than usual lately.”

Phil wonders if Dan is this familiar with everyone or if it’s something to do with the bond. Even just thinking the word makes his heart rate spike again, so he grabs an extra large cup and heads to the bar. “Me too, actually,” he says quietly.

Dan’s answering laugh is also quiet, just a little huff of air. Phil’s afraid to look up at him, so he doesn’t. He makes the drink with shaky hands, trying in vain to come up with something conversational to say instead of vomiting all the questions that are building up pressure in his chest.

Dan seems unphased by the bizarreness of the situation. “Did you go back and buy the Britney?” he asks. When Phil looks up he sees Dan studying the record player.

“No,” Phil says. 

Dan clicks his tongue. “Shame.”

Phil drizzles caramel over the foam at the top of the drink. He’s pleased at the thickness of it; cow milk foams up much better than almond. He puts it up for Dan to take and says, “It doesn’t fit the vibe anyway.”

“Any vibe that doesn’t include early noughties pop is invalid.”

“I’m glad we agree on this matter.”

“The vibe in here is good though.” He picks up his macchiato and takes a thoughtful sip. “I like how empty it is.”

Phil snorts. “Yeah, let’s pretend that’s a choice.”

“Well the coffee is good,” Dan says. “And you’ve got The Cure playing on an actual turntable. That’s pretty fucking great.”

“I’ll tell my brother you think so.” He cleans off the steam wand and hopes Dan won’t notice how unsteady his hands are. “Actually, I’ll tell Cornelia too. She buys most of the records.”

Dan puts his coffee back down and pushes off from where he’d been leaned against the side of the bar and heads towards the milk crate collection. He crouches down and starts flipping through and Phil can’t bring himself not to watch. He hadn’t been in the right frame of mind last time to commit the details of Dan’s appearance to memory.

He’s bent over the records like he cares about what he’s looking at. He’s got headphones around the back of his neck again. Everything about the way he carries himself in this moment says that music is to him what Phil thinks it must be to Martyn and Corn. He can’t help wondering if maybe that’s not an accident. 

“Who’s Cornelia?” Dan asks, not taking his eyes off the records.

“My brother’s… girlfriend.” The pause is awkward and conspicuous. Dan turns his head ‘round to give Phil an inquisitive look. “They’re… you know,” Phil says, even more awkwardly, if that’s possible.

“Ah.” He goes back to perusing, and Phil lets him. 

He doesn’t try to make conversation. Perhaps he wants to prove the claim he’d made last time he’d seen Dan, that despite evidence to the contrary, he actually has relative control over his mental faculties. Or perhaps he’s just too bloody terrified. This all feels like a test. Or like… an audition. His performance here could very well shape the rest of his life.

Thoughts like that are too much. They make his heart lurch. “You can put on whatever you want,” he blurts. His voice is too loud, too nervous to even remotely pass for casual.

Dan stands, stretches his arms up, and shakes his head. “Just wanted to check out the selection. I’m impressed.”

“I’m trying to make my way through them. I’m musically illiterate.”

“Unacceptable.” He walks back over to the bar and picks up his cup again.

Phil’s every muscle feels pulled tight enough to snap. This trivial small talk is testing the limits of his anxiety when all he really wants to do is ask: What now? Where do we go from here?

He knows what he felt that day at the record shop. He’ll remember it until the day he dies. But right now, right here with Dan stood right in front of him, all he feels is a vague nausea. There’s no ease. There’s no clarity. He doesn’t feel some kind of magical… well, bond. 

The universe isn’t going to make this easy on him, then. That much is clear. 

Dan is looking at him, though. He’s here. That’s a step. That’s something.

Phil knows it’s his turn to talk. He needs to say something, but he doesn’t know what. He’d never once stopped to think that he’d be lost for words when he met the one. He’d assumed it would feel as natural as breathing.

The door to the shop opens then, and Dan seems shaken from whatever his own internal musings were. He takes a step back from the bar and says, “Right, well. Thanks. I’ll see you.”

Instinct tells Phil he can’t let Dan get away again, but luckily he’s able to quash it this time around. “Yeah?” he says. 

Dan shrugs. “I like coffee. I like music. I like spending time in places where people aren’t.”

“Oi.”

A cheeky smirk spreads across Dan’s face, dimpling his cheek. “Bye, Phil.”

Phil gives a little wave and watches him leave, promising himself that if Dan actually does come back sometime, he’ll ask at least one of the questions bouncing around in his head.

-

Because he has so many questions. He lies awake that night thinking about them. Thinking about a lot of things, big things that he tends not to like to think about, especially when he’s meant to be sleeping. He’s thinking about what his life is going to look like, with or without Dan. 

It’s ridiculous, really. Dan is truly a stranger. Phil doesn’t know a single thing about him. But the universe or God or Mother Nature or whoever the hell makes the rules has decided that their lives should be bound. Why? How is something like that determined? Who decides? Is it all just a cosmic joke between the Gods sitting up in the clouds looking down, laughing at the little mortal idiots following along with blind faith despite the obvious absurdity of it all? Are humans just chess pieces in some higher powers’ game?

And if they are, does he even care? What good is free will if it makes him miserable? Is he miserable now? He doesn’t think he is. He wants things - or, well, he wants to want things. He’s just not sure what.

Maybe it’s as simple as wanting to be happy. Or wanting to feel like he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing. But then his thoughts loop right back around to wondering if any of the things that happen here on Earth even matter. If he’s just a pawn, then what does it matter if Dan never shows up at the shop again? Maybe it’s all just random. Maybe bonding means nothing and they’ve all just deluded themselves into believing it’s this wonderful gift they’ve been given. 

None of these are even the questions he has for Dan. He’s got too many bloody questions and not a single solitary answer. He turns his head on the pillow to check the time, hoping it’s not too late to ring Ian, or maybe even Cornelia. It is, though. He’s been laid here for hours, sleep as elusive as the answers to his endless questions.

He fishes his phone out from under his pillow and opens Spotify. He searches for the album he always searches for when he’s rather not be thinking about anything at all, Muse’s Origin of Symmetry. It’s moments like these he’s extra grateful for not having to worry about keeping a flatmate awake. He turns up the volume as high as it’ll go and places his phone on the pillow beside his head. 

He closes his eyes and lets the music invade his head, colour his thoughts hazy. It works. He forgets about his questions. Instead he thinks of the enigma that is his soulmate. A tall guy with wavy brown hair and headphones and a dimple when he smiles. He thinks of _I’ll see you_ and wonders if it’s true. Will he see him again, outside of his own head?

When he wakes up, there’s sun in the sky and his phone is dead. 

-

He doesn’t stroll into the shop until late morning, but Martyn and Cornelia are already there. Martyn is immersed in something on his laptop, but Cornelia is behind the counter biting her nails. He smiles at her, which is apparently a mistake, because her response is a frown. “How are you?” she asks gravely.

“Tired,” he says, chucking his coat into the back room and heading for the bar. He grabs one of the porcelain mugs off the shelf and hands it to her. “Caffeinate me.”

The fact that she doesn’t argue tells him that something is up. Maybe it has been for a while and he’d been too lost in his own head to notice. 

“How are you?” he asks her, hoisting himself up backwards to sit on the counter and watch her struggle through making him a latte. 

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. I feel like we haven’t talked much in a while.”

She looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. “You’re joking, right?”

His stomach clenches. He should probably tell her what happened. “Sorry, I…” 

He doesn’t want to tell her what happened. She’ll ask questions, and not having the answers will feel even worse. “I’ve been feeling… off.”

She looks at him for a very dragged out moment, probably contemplating whether or not to push him for the truth. “And now you’re not?”

He shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

She sighs very quietly and turns her attention back to the drink she’s trying to make for him. “You need to teach me how to do this stuff,” she mutters. “You can’t be the only employee. It’s not healthy for you to spend so much time here.”

“I’ll hire someone,” Martyn shouts from his spot on the yellow sofa. 

“With what money?” Phil quips. “No one ever comes in.”

Martyn shrugs. “Enough people must. We’re doing alright.”

Phil shakes his head. “You got the best power ever, you know that right? I hope you know that.”

Martyn shrugs again and Phil has the distinct urge to throw something at his head.

“I think mine’s cooler,” Cornelia offers, quietly enough so Mar can’t hear.

“Weren’t you always good at music, though?”

“I mean, I always loved it. I worked hard to be good at it.”

“And now you don’t?” 

“Now it’s just… easier.” She hands Phil his drink. “I guess it’s like with Martyn. He was always kind of lucky wasn’t he? Things always tended to go his way?”

“So what, you’re saying the powers just… heighten what’s already there?”

She shrugs. “That’s been my experience with it. It doesn’t feel like I’m a superhero.” 

“Did it happen right away? Like right when you met?”

She cocks an eyebrow and he snaps his mouth shut. “Idle curiosity?” she asks.

“Sure.”

“It didn’t,” she says. “It was gradual. And I think it got stronger the more time we spent together. But even then it’s like… it’s subtle, Phil. It’s not a life changing thing.”

He manages to contain his eye roll.

“It won’t solve all your problems.”

He frowns. “Have you been talking to Ian?”

“Who is Ian?”

He picks up his drink and takes a sip. It’s bad, like properly bad, but he’s not going to say anything. “You never answered the original question.”

“What was it?” she asks.

“How are you.”

“Oh. I’m… fine. Worried about you.”

“I’m fine, too,” he assures her. “As fine as I ever am, anyway. Don’t worry.”

“Have you deleted those horrible dating apps?”

He smirks remembering the last interaction he’d had in that vein. “Um.” He can feel his face going sheepish, and probably red too. 

“Oh my god, Phil. No.”

“It was just photos!” he insists. “I didn’t actually do anything.”

Suddenly Martyn appears right next to them, and Phil wishes he’d tried a little harder to lie.

“What’s this now?” he asks, looking between Phil and Corn. “Photos of what?”

Phil opens his mouth to try to mitigate, but Cornelia shouts, “Phil sent nudes!”

Martyn smirks, about to say something, when a fourth voice says, “I hope your face wasn’t in them.”

Phil whips his head around to see the worst case scenario: Dan standing on the other side of the counter, hands shoved in his pockets, ubiquitous headphones slung ‘round the back of his neck. His cheeks are pink from the cold and he’s dressed all in black.

“Dan,” Phil squeaks.

“Dan?” Cornelia says. “Who is Dan?”

Dan gives a little two fingered wave. “That would be me.”

“Who cares about Dan,” Martyn says. “Phil sent nudes!”

Phil hides his face in his hands. He couldn’t dream of pretending not to be mortified. “I hate you,” he mutters into his palms. He hopes they know he’s referring to all of them. A collective you. 

There is a silence then, an excruciating span of seconds in which no one seems to know what to say. Phil lifts his head up and says weakly, “My face wasn’t in the photo. But it’s on my profile.”

Martyn laughs. Cornelia looks horrified. “Delete it!” she says. “Delete that stupid app right now!”

“The damage is done,” Dan says. “Nothing can ever really be deleted off the internet.”

“God,” Cornelia mutters.

Martyn is still laughing. “You’ll be fine. Everyone does it.” He gives Cornelia a cheeky elbow to the arm. She looks like she wants to rip his face off.

“Alright, that’s it,” Phil declares. “I’m going on a break.”

“You just got here,” Cornelia reminds him.

He ignores her, grabs his coat out of the back room and heads for the door. He’s not sure how he feels about the fact that Dan follows him. He walks down the pavement until he finds an unoccupied bench. He sits on one end and Dan sits on the other. 

“Is that Cornelia?” Dan asks.

Phil nods.

“And your brother?”

He nods again.

“Do they always get in your business like that? That’s a nightmare.”

Phil groans. “Please can we pretend that didn’t happen? I don’t even—” He hides his face again. “It was one frickin’ photo and I've never done anything like that before. It was a middle of the night rock bottom kind of moment.”

“Mate. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Phil looks up and over at him. “You came back.”

“You’ve got good observation skills.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Phil says. His mouth is blurting out words before his brain can properly vet them.

“I haven’t for weeks.”

“Because of me?”

Dan huffs a laugh. “I mean… yeah. I guess.”

“So you don’t think I made a mistake.” He doesn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but it still kind of does.

Surprise flashes across Dan’s face, and then he looks away, bottom lip caught between his teeth. “Have you told anyone?” he asks quietly. “Do they know, the lot back at the café?”

“No. I told my mate Ian, but he lives in Manchester. I never see him anymore. Martyn and Cornelia don’t know, but they’ve probably guessed. Cornelia was with me at the record shop.”

“Fuck.”

It registers to Phil how strange it is that he can be hurt by Dan’s clear desire for their bond to be a secret. “Is that why you came back? To make sure I didn’t tell anyone?”

Dan leans forward, elbows digging into the tops of his thighs. “Do you actually believe in this shit, for real?”

“You don’t?”

Dan turns his head to look at Phil. He looks at him for a long time, dark eyes scanning his face with intimidating intensity. “I don’t know you, man. I’m not just gonna tell you all my deep dark secrets.”

Phil frowns. “I’m not asking you to.”

“Well what are you asking me to do?”

Phil opens his mouth, then closes it again. He looks down into his lap at the way his hands are wrung together. “I dunno. I guess I never…” He lowers his voice so it’s barely more than a whisper. “I never stopped to think my soulmate would want nothing to do with me.”

“Don’t say the— don’t say it. Please.”

“You didn’t have to come back,” Phil says. “It’s not like I know who you are. You could’ve just let it be and I’d have had no choice but to move on.”

Dan looks away again. “Yeah. I know.”

“If you came to tell me to leave you alone, just say it and go.” His voice is infuriatingly wobbly, not the confident anger he was hoping for at all.

“I didn’t,” Dan says quietly. “Honestly, I don’t know why I came.”

Phil’s heart is suddenly pounding, because he knows he’s about to make his case, and Dan could very well go away for good after this. But he has to try. It’s humiliating, but he has to say it at least once. “I was happy you came back.” He spits it out and then drops his gaze downwards. 

Dan’s leg is bouncing in a nervous way Phil recognizes only too well. It warms something in him, and he works hard not to let more than a little upward quirk touch his lips. Dan wouldn’t be nervous if he didn’t care, if he wasn’t at least feeling _something_.

“You don’t even know me,” Dan says. “I could be a complete psychopath. I could be a fucking cannibal.”

“Maybe I’m a cannibal too.”

Dan looks intensely thoughtful, a frown creasing his forehead before a smile cracks his face open. Then he laughs, looking away from Phil and down to the ground. Phil can’t help smiling along. It feels like he did something right.

“Right,” Dan says, kicking a little at a crack in the pavement. 

“What do you want?” Phil asks. Dan looks at him and Phil says, “You’re curious.” He’s feeling bolder by the minute now.

“Maybe, a bit.” He reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, and Phil recognizes it as another nervous gesture, almost a tic.

“This is weird,” Phil says.

Dan laughs. “It’s the fucking weirdest.”

“I never thought it would be weird. I assumed it would just be… easy.”

Dan’s smile drops. “I assumed it wouldn’t happen to me. I hoped it wouldn’t.”

Phil’s quite sure he’s not able to disguise the way that makes him feel. Logically he knows it can’t be personal. Dan said it himself, they don’t know each other. But it’s all so far removed from the fantasy he’d been building up in his head that he honestly wants to cry. 

He stands up and says, “Come with me,” not waiting to see if Dan’s going to follow him as he walks back to the shop. 

He does follow, though. Phil goes in and ignores Martyn and Cornelia’s questioning stares as he grabs a sharpie and heads back outside, where Dan is stood waiting with his hands in his pockets. 

“Gimme your hand,” Phil says. His own are shaking even more than usual.

Dan looks bewildered, but he pulls his left hand out of its denim prison and Phil grabs it before he loses his nerve. Dan’s fingers are warm despite the cold, and Phil kind of hates that he definitely _doesn’t_ hate the way it feels when their skin touches, but he forces the thought aside and scribbles his mobile number on Dan’s palm.

“Ring me or don’t,” he says, capping the sharpie, putting it in his pocket, and walking back inside the shop.

Dan doesn’t follow this time, and he’s gone from outside the big glass windows of the shop by the time Phil’s chucked his coat in the back room and resumed his rightful place behind the bar.

Cornelia doesn’t waste any time with her interrogation. “Who was that?”

“Some guy I went to school with,” Phil lies. It’s probably the smoothest non truth he’s ever told, but he’d rather chew glass than admit that he’s not sure he’s ever going to hear from his soulmate again. “He didn’t have his phone so I had to write my number on his hand.”

The look she gives him tells him she doesn’t buy that for a second, but she doesn’t push it. She does ask, “Are you alright?”

Phil knows that’s a lie he can’t pull off right now. “Not really.”

“Talk to me?”

He shakes his head. “I kind of just want to be alone, actually.” He sees her exchange a look with Martyn, and adds, “It’s fine, I’m fine. I just need space to think.”

It takes a while before he convinces her it’s fine for her to leave, and even then it’s mostly because Martyn tells her they have to go anyway. He gives Phil a look that tells him it isn’t quite the truth, and Phil mouths a thank you. He’s suddenly glad they don’t have the type of brotherly bond where they feel the need to talk about their feelings all the time.

Phil doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t particularly want to think either. He just doesn’t want to have to pretend that he’s anything other than a confused mess. He puts on The Smiths again and drinks coffee until he actually starts getting customers. He’s never been so grateful to have actual work to do. 

Maybe the uptick is thanks to the time of year. It’s into December now and shops have started hanging lights outside for Christmas. The air is cold and people are out and about for the express purpose of spending money. The quirky café with the mismatched sofas and the vintage record player in the corner is a nice pit stop on the way to romanticized seasonal consumerism. 

He doesn’t usually think this way, with this kind of bitterness. He actually loves Christmas. He loves shopping for gifts for his family and drinking overly sweet holiday coffees and wearing ugly knitted jumpers. He doesn’t judge or begrudge anyone giving in to a little bit of capitalistic holiday-ing. Usually. He’s thinking with bitterness right now because he’s bitter, and he can’t even talk about it because everyone in his life is happily bonded.

Oh, and his own soulmate most likely wants nothing to do with him.

He closes up the shop as soon as people stop coming in, even though it’s technically earlier than what the sign says on the door. If Martyn cares, he can put his money where his mouth is and hire someone. Maybe even a few someones. Right now Phil just wants to be home. He wants a proper wallow. Not that he hasn’t been wallowing every night for weeks. 

Tonight’s wallowing involves a dinner of popcorn and Ribena and a viewing of Nightmare on Elm Street. The death scenes are brutal, the acting is terrible and the effects are laughably dated, but it’s all balanced out by a young, very cute Johnny Depp. Every time Phil watches it he feels a little burst of happiness for the freedom of adulthood he now enjoys. He may be mostly adrift on a sea of existential uncertainty, but at least he can watch the films he could only fantasize about back then, when he still had to follow his mum’s rules. She’d told him he’d have too many nightmares about Freddy Krueger, but looking back, he reckons he’d have been dreaming about Johnny.

Thinking about baby Phil and his intense celebrity boy crushes sends his mind down a certain path, one he welcomes as a nice distraction from agonizing over whether or not he’ll ever hear from Dan again. One that winds through memories of surfers with nine pack abs and cheeky teenage games of spin the bottle with his straight friends. He thinks about university and the origin of his bad luck with dating apps, of looking for love and finding only sex, and before he knows it he’s reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone and find what is quickly becoming his favourite wank material.

It’s not like he’s got feelings for this random stranger, and it’s not like he couldn’t find something a lot more explicit with a two second google search; there’s just something about knowing this particular cock is attached to a bloke who would definitely sleep with Phil if he asked. The potential of it is far more appealing than the reality of it would be, and in no time at all Phil’s got a hand in his pants and a head full of dirty hypotheticals that will forever remain as such. 

He’s gotten himself halfway there when his phone rings. Somehow he’d managed to turn the ringer on and of course the volume is up full blast. He yelps and swipes open on the call with a hand still wrapped around his dick.

He holds the phone awkwardly and considers hanging up, but something compels him to bring it up to his ear and say, “Hello?”

“Hi.”

Phil’s heart nearly leaps out of his body. He yanks his hand out of his underwear and grabs one of the sofa’s cushions to shield his crotch as if Dan could see through the screen. 

Dan. It’s Dan. 

“Is this Phil?” Dan asks after a very long silence.

“Yeah,” Phil croaks. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

Silence.

“It’s Dan.”

More silence.

“Hello?”

Phil forces himself to ignore the coursing of nervous energy through his body to engage with the person on the other end of the line. “Sorry. Hi.”

“Is now a bad time?” Dan asks.

“No.” 

“You sound… flustered.”

Phil barks a laugh, then immediately bites it back. 

“You’re well strange, you know that?”

“What do you want?” Phil asks. 

“Oh, uh… Wow, straight to the point then, eh?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t ring me to chat.”

“Maybe I did,” Dan says. “Would that be allowed?”

Phil fumbles for the remote so he can turn off the movie. He’d muted it earlier, but even silent bloody carnage is a bit too much distraction at the moment. “You tell me,” he says. 

Dan is quiet for a moment. “I reckon it’s allowed, seeing as we’re…”

Phil waits, but Dan never finishes the thought. “Thought you didn’t believe in all this shit,” Phil says, his tone more than a touch bitter.

Dan sighs. “Look, I know I was a dick. I’m sure it won’t be the last time.”

“That implies there will be more times.”

“Well… yeah. I guess it does.”

“So I was right,” Phil says.

“About what?”

“You’re curious.”

Dan takes a very long time to answer. “Maybe.”

“Are you a cannibal?” Phil asks.

“No. Are you?”

“Maybe.”

Dan laughs. “Reckon I’d just taste like salt.”

“I like salt,” Phil says without thinking.

“Is that… Are you trying to flirt?”

Phil drops his head back against the couch and throws his arm over his eyes. “No. Crap. Did you ring just to humiliate me?”

“No, I— I actually think I rang to apologize.”

“Oh.”

“So I guess I should do that.”

Phil squirms at the sudden vulnerability. “You don’t have to. It’s a weird situation.”

“I have reasons, you know,” Dan says. “I’m not just an asshole. I’m usually overly polite to people, actually.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Phil says, echoing an earlier sentiment of Dan’s. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. There’s a crack in the corner he’d never noticed until now. “I’m sure I didn’t do myself any favours chasing you down like a lunatic.”

Dan doesn’t answer for a long time. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still glad I came back?” He pauses. “Are you glad you chased me?”

“I mean… yeah. I’m glad I don’t have to wonder for the rest of my life if I made a mistake in letting you get away.”

There is another long silence. Phil can hear Dan breathing, so he knows he’s still there. 

Eventually Dan says, “Would you flirt if I hadn’t run?”

Phil’s chest hurts with the urgency of his anxious heart rate. He sits up ramrod straight. “What— what are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says quietly. 

“We don’t know each other,” Phil says. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“Are you gay?”

Phil laughs, but Dan remains absolutely silent on the other line, like it wasn’t a joke at all. “Oh,” Phil says. The tension is thick as butter. “Yeah, I am. Are you not?”

Dan doesn’t answer. Instead he asks, “Did your brother and his girlfriend ask about me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Long pause. “Alright.”

“I told them you were a mate from uni.”

“Wait, what? You did?”

Phil sighs. Something about the relief in Dan’s tone chafes at his insecurity. “What do you want, Dan?”

“I’m sorry,” Dan says. He sounds so dejected. 

Phil pinches the bridge of his nose. As a kid he’d always watch his dad do that and wonder why such small things seemed to set off reactions like that. Was it really that hard to be a grownup?

Turns out it isn’t. It’s harder. “I think I’m gonna hang up now, Dan.”

“Are you working tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Phil says. “It’s pretty much all I do.”

“Do you like sushi?”

He’d laugh at the sheer randomness of that question if not for the fact that every conversation he has with this guy is an incoherent jumble of banal and intensely personal. “Yeah. I’ve warmed to it recently.”

“Alright. I’ll leave you alone now. See you.” He hangs up.

“See you,” Phil murmurs to the emptiness on the other end of the line. 

-

Dan shows up at the shop a few days later, just as Phil is starting to wonder if he ever will. He arrives a few hours after Martyn has left to run errands, which is just as well, really. Martyn has proven he’s got no qualms about making things awkward.

Cornelia has slightly higher levels of tact, but a lot more curiosity, and she’s still here, sat on the blue sofa with her glasses slid down nearly to the end of her nose as she writes something into a tattered old notebook. Phil reckons it’s song lyrics but he hasn’t asked, so he can’t be sure. He’s been lost inside his own head lately, to say the least. 

And now the subject of a large majority of his inner musings is stood in front of him, hands full of takeaway sushi and headphones still pulled up over his ears. He’s somehow pale and flushed at the same time, his posture only slightly less awkward than it had been at his last drop in.

Phil’s midway through crafting a truly heinous looking unsweetened rice milk green tea latte for a bloke with a lip ring and a bleached blond man bun. There’s a dreamy sounding song about honey playing from the record corner. Cornelia’s been solely responsible for the playlist today, so he’s got no idea what it is, but it’s nice. He’s liked almost everything she’s chosen today; it must be easier to write music when the background is chill.

He puts up the steamy green abomination and smiles at the guy, wondering idly why hair that ridiculous works well on some people and not others. Phil had tried the whole blond thing as a preteen and spent the better part of the school year with the charming nickname ‘highlighter head.’ Black seems to be what works for him, and he’s stuck with it since uni. The cut gets a little shorter every year, but he agonizes about every half inch he loses. He can’t imagine having the balls to sport a look like this guy. 

It’s possible he’s trying to distract himself now with inconsequential internal debate about hair. For the amount of time he’s spent lately thinking about Dan, he’s still got no idea how to act when he actually shows up. 

Dan has nice hair. It looks soft when he pulls his headphones down.

“Hi,” he says, when Man Bun has gone and Phil still hasn’t verbally acknowledged that Dan is there.

“Did you bring me food?” Phil asks.

“Yeah.” He takes a few steps closer. “Is that alright?”

Phil nods, and he can’t help shooting a glance in Cornelia’s direction. She’s still deeply absorbed in her notebook and hasn’t taken any notice of Phil’s guest yet.

Dan follows Phil’s eyeline. “I don't have to stay,” he says quietly.

Phil doesn’t consider it even for a moment. As terrified as he is, there’s no way he’s ever going to turn Dan away. “Do you want a drink?” he asks instead, reaching out to take the food from Dan and set it down on the counter. 

“Sure. I like everything.”

Phil knows it’s not a blanket statement, but for some reason it makes him smile. If he likes everything then surely a slightly more awkward than average bloke with no direction and boring hair could grow on him over time.

He makes Dan a cappuccino. It feels like more of an adult drink than what he’d make for himself, and he reckons he doesn’t need to reveal his ‘overgrown child’s taste in food’ card just yet. The universe sees fit to bestow him with enough luck to get the foam just right, and he’s actually feeling kind of good when he slides the mug across the counter to Dan.

Just then the door to the shop opens and the luck makes perfect sense - Martyn waltzes in and says, “Oi, it’s Dan.”

Cornelia looks up from her writing and Phil’s stomach drops. Dan waves in a way that’s equal parts nervous and endearing. “It is.”

“He was in the neighbourhood,” Phil says, hoping it sounds believable.

The look Martyn and Corn exchange says it really, really doesn’t, but mercifully neither of them call any more attention to it. “Nice of you to stop by, mate,” Mar says. “I know Phil gets bored when I’m not here to entertain him.”

Phil rolls his eyes. “What are you doing here? Come to relieve me?”

Martyn snorts. “You know I can’t make drinks for shite. I’m here for my bird.”

“Tweet tweet,” Cornelia says, pushing her glasses up and stretching out her arms and legs. “Dan, you’re on Phil minding duty now.”

“This is abuse,” Phil says. “I’m a grown man.”

Dan laughs. Phil can tell it’s not really genuine, but it still lights his face up in a way Phil can’t look away from. “I’ll do my best.”

“You looking for a job by any chance?” Martyn asks. He gestures at Phil. “I told this one I’d hire someone else so he can maybe have a day off every now and again.”

“God, Mar…” Phil shakes his head in embarrassment.

“Think I’ve got employment mostly covered,” Dan says goodnaturedly. “Besides, I’m not great with the whole retail thing. I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had except the one I’ve got now.”

“And what’s that?” Martyn asks. Phil would call him out for being blunt and rude, but he’s actually dying to know the answer. 

“I’m a journalist of sorts, I s’pose,” Dan says. “Mostly I write reviews.”

“Ooh,” Cornelia coos. Phil tries not to act surprised or impressed, though he is, especially the latter. He also feels a sudden burning of inadequacy, but that’s not really a new thing. 

“Reviews of what?” Martyn asks. 

“Music, mostly.”

Martyn and Cornelia exchange another look, but this time Phil barely notices it. It’s just… it’s almost too much. Of course. Of course Dan’s a music aficionado. It would seem Phil is destined to be forever outmatched, even by his own fucking soulmate.

“Damn,” Martyn says slowly. “The enemy.”

Cornelia slaps his arm. 

“Can Glowing Palms actually be designated music?” Phil asks. He’s bitter and he can’t bite it back.

“Oi!” Martyn just laughs, fully oblivious. “Stop pretending you don’t love my beats.”

Dan frowns. “Wait— what? _Your_ beats? You’re Glowing Palms?”

Phil’s about two seconds from screaming. “You’ve heard of him?” 

“Of course.” 

_Of fucking course._

“See, Phil?” Martyn grins ear to ear. “Some people have taste.”

“He didn’t say he was a fan,” Phil grumbles.

Martyn ignores him. “You lot should come to the show Friday night. You had fun last time, didn’t you, little bro?”

Phil’s about to say he’d rather watch paint dry, but Dan says, “I’m down.”

Phil looks at him. “Really?”

“Unless you don’t want me to…”

“He wants you to,” Cornelia says decisively. She gives Phil a look that he’s not sure he fully understands. 

“Brilliant!” Martyn claps Dan on the back. “See you there, mate. Maybe you could even give me a good review.”

At that point Cornelia grabs her coat from the back and drags Martyn out, and Phil’s pretty sure he knows why. He’s pretty sure she knows exactly what’s going on, and she wants to give him the space to figure things out. Martyn may have hit the soulmate jackpot, but Phil reckons he’s almost as lucky in this one regard. His life has definitely gotten better for having an almost sister-in-law like her in it. 

“You don’t have to come,” Phil says once it’s just the two of them in the shop. “I can make up an excuse for you.”

Dan shrugs. “I don’t have anything better to do, and shows are like the one socal activity I actually enjoy, but if you don’t want me to—”

“It’s not that.” 

“Okay,” Dan says. “So…”

“I’m not cool like my brother,” Phil blurts.

“Not everyone can be legendary in the local underground EDM scene.”

“Oh god.” Phil scrubs his hand down over his face. “Legendary? Really?”

“I mean… in certain circles,” Dan amends. 

Phil sighs dramatically. “Of course he is.” He’s so flustered that he forgets to be awkward and digs into one of the bags Dan’s brought. He hops up onto the counter and shoves a California roll in his mouth. “He says his power is luck, but maybe it’s just being cool.”

“Power?”

Phil chews his sushi aggressively. “Whatever the hell you wanna call it.”

Dan’s just stood there looking mildly uncomfortable, but Phil is still too annoyed to be apologetic. Instead he says, “Take off your coat, help me eat these.”

So Dan does just that, tossing it onto the closest sofa and leaning up against the counter where Phil’s sat. He pulls a set of chopsticks from the bag and breaks them apart. “So luck, eh?”

“Yeah,” Phil says miserably. 

“What about Cornelia?”

“Music.”

“No shit.” Dan picks up a roll with perfect form and Phil realizes too late that he’s watching Dan eat with far more attention than he should.

“I’m doomed to be surrounded by people cooler than me,” Phil says, forcing himself to look away from Dan’s mouth. The dynamics of knowing that some cosmic force wants him to be with Dan in a romantic capacity is hard to ignore when Dan’s lips look… like that.

Phil hadn’t noticed before with quite such clarity, but Dan is proper fit. Tall, nice hair, dark eyes. 

“I’m not cool,” he says, and it takes Phil a moment to remember what they’re meant to be talking about.

Phil rolls his eyes. “Spoken like a true cool person.”

“Martyn seems the type not to argue when someone calls him cool.”

“That’s true,” Phil admits. “He’s the obnoxious type of cool.”

“Are you the type of little brother who pretends to be annoyed?”

“As opposed to what?” Phil asks.

“As opposed to actually being annoyed.”

Phil cocks an eyebrow. “Do you have beef with your older brother?”

Dan shakes his head. “I _am_ the older brother.”

“Oh.”

“My brother is the type who isn’t pretending.”

“He’s annoyed by you?” Phil asks.

Dan laughs, but there’s no warmth in the sound. “I dunno. We don’t really get on.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. He hates that he’s obviously gone wrong somewhere and he doesn’t even know how.

Dan shakes his head. “I forgot, no deep dark secrets. We’re basically strangers.”

“I’m not pretending to be annoyed, but I also don’t actually have bad feelings,” Phil says, ignoring Dan’s attempt to steer them away from learning things about each other. He wants to learn about Dan. He can’t give up hope that their bonding wasn’t a mistake, not when Dan keeps showing up like this. “I guess more than anything I’m jealous. He’s athletic and musical and socially competent and I’m… not.”

Dan smiles. “Well if it makes you feel better, I only got the musical bit. Adrian got the other stuff.”

“We’re not strangers, by the way,” Phil says quietly. “Not really.”

Dan’s whole demeanor changes. He stands up stiff, a frown creasing his forehead into pinched little lines. “Don’t.”

Phil bites his lip, chews on the thin skin until he can’t keep the words in. “Are we ever going to talk about it? I know it’s weird, but shouldn’t—”

“Look, I’m here, aren’t I?” Dan interrupts. “Right now that’s all I’ve got.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Do you want me not to come to your brother’s show?”

Phil pulls one of his legs up and clutches it against his chest. If a customer came in right now the whole scene would look truly unprofessional, and for Phil that’s really saying something, but he doesn’t care. It’s half three on a Tuesday afternoon and the boss isn’t in anymore, not that he’d care either. 

“I want you to come,” Phil says finally. “If I have to go, I want you to come with me.”

Dan picks up another roll with his sticks. “Glad we got that sorted.”

“I can’t dance,” Phil says. “I’m not even going to try.”

Dan snorts. “You think I _am_? Fuck no. I have the coordination of a drunk baby giraffe.”

Phil smiles. “Good. Another thing sorted then. Although I think you underestimate my awkwardness.”

Dan looks at him consideringly. “Hm.” He tilts his head. 

Phil tries not to squirm under the attention. “What?”

“I’m estimating.”

“What is your estimation, good sir?”

Dan snickers, then shrugs. “You don’t look any more awkward than I _feel_ at any given time.”

“You haven’t even seen me walk. I can trip on air.”

“I’ve seen you run,” Dan reminds him. “You run pretty fast.”

Phil hides his face in the crook of his elbow. “See? Chasing a stranger down the street. That’s pretty frickin’ awkward.”

“You must’ve really wanted to catch me,” Dan says quietly, looking away from Phil and down at the food.

“You must’ve really not wanted me to catch you.”

Dan looks up.

“I’ve never run that fast in my life,” Phil admits. 

“I reckon I haven’t either.”

Phil rests his chin on his knee and watches Dan eat a whole spicy tuna roll in one go. “You have your reasons.”

Dan nods.

“What are the odds I’ll ever get to hear any of them?” Phil asks. 

“Too early to tell,” Dan deadpans, as if they aren’t having a conversation about their future together. As if Phil isn’t asking Dan if he thinks they’ve got a shot at falling in love.

Why hadn’t he ever taken a moment to stop and think about how exceptionally insane the whole thing is? He’s been acting like a scorned lover, when the truth is closer to him being a stalker who’s guilt-tripping his victim into hanging out with him.

But they live in the same world, don’t they? A world where finding your soulmate is meant to be a good thing, a cause for celebration. 

“Maybe fifty one percent,” Dan says.

“What?”

“Your odds.”

Long pause. “Oh.”

“Don’t look so disappointed,” Dan says. “If I fucked off forever I’d be doing you a favour.”

“Do you actually believe that?”

“Yes, I do. Very much so.”

“Why?”

Dan shakes his head. “I told you, fifty one percent. Too early for deep dark secrets.”

“I’ll settle for some regular secrets,” Phil says. “Or even just well-known facts at this point.”

“You first,” Dan says. 

Phil shrugs. “I’m pretty much an open book. I’ll tell you anything.”

“What’s your name?”

“Phil. Philip. Lester. You?”

“Daniel. Howell.”

“We both kind of sound like old men,” Phil says. “Like professors or lawyers or something.”

“I tried to be a lawyer,” Dan says. “For a whopping year before I had a mental breakdown and dropped out.”

“Journalist is much cooler.”

“I’m lucky,” Dan says. “Things could just as easily have ended up with me working at ASDA and sharing a shit flat with like five other dudes.”

“ASDA is only slightly less cool than working at your brother’s coffee shop,” Phil points out. 

“This place is cool,” Dan argues. “You’re sitting on the counter eating sushi and listening to REM on vinyl.”

Phil just shrugs. 

“Did you go to school?”

He laughs, the sound of it like a bark. “Yeah, I did, for many more years than I needed to.” Just then a customer comes in. “I’m probably the most overeducated barista who’s ever made you a drink.” He hops down from the counter, grateful for the excuse to take a break from the discussion. 

For the next half hour or so, the universe seems determined to make him do some actual work for his paycheck. It never gets busy, but it never gets slow enough for him to return to his conversation with Dan. He keeps looking over to the sofas expecting to see an absence where Dan’s coat had been, but instead his eyes keep landing on Dan himself, flipping through the records mulling over what to put on next.

When the mini rush ends, Dan’s sat slouched down on the yellow sofa with one ankle resting on the knee of the opposite leg. He’s scrolling idly through his phone, looking about as casual and relaxed as a person could. Phil definitely feels something when he looks at him, but their whole situation is too bizarre to even properly make sense of it. Dan is an attractive guy who seems at least mildly interested in spending time with him, which Phil reckons is enough for a little fizzle of warmth in his gut, even outside of the whole ‘bonded for life’ thing.

“You didn’t have to stay,” Phil says, walking over and flopping down on the opposite end of the sofa.

Dan slides his phone into the pocket of his jeans. “I know.”

“Alright. Good.”

“Can I say something?” Dan asks.

Phil pretends to think about it, then says, “Go on then.”

“I understand the whole self deprecation thing, trust me. Like, even more than that. I understand kind of hating yourself. But comparing yourself to me and concluding that you’re coming up short is fucking insane.”

“You don’t know me,” Phil says, immediately defensive

“I think the more relevant point here is that you don’t know _me_. You know my name and what I do for work, basically. I’m not dropping hints about dark secrets to entice you. Those are real.”

Phil wants to argue, to point out each and every little thing that adds up to him being the poster child for unfulfilled potential, but he squashes that impulse down. He clears his throat and looks down at his feet instead. “Sorry. I guess this whole thing is like… not what I expected. And you knowing who Martyn is felt like a bit of a kick in the balls, if I’m honest.”

Dan chuckles. “Knowing the local music scene is kind of my job, man.”

“Right. Of course.”

“I’m sorry your soulm—” He shakes his head and tries again, clearly not wanting to say the actual word. “I’m sorry this isn’t what you expected. It’s not what I ever expected either.”

Phil shrugs. “You’re here, anyway. That’s something.”

Dan laugh-snorts quietly and reaches a foot out to very gently push at Phil’s thigh. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

Phil doesn’t quite manage to contain his smirk. “Shut up.”

“Tell me things, then,” Dan says. “Where’d you go to school?”

“York.”

“What’d you take?”

Phil shakes his head at himself. “What didn’t I take? English, linguistics, film, psychology… bit of everything.”

“So why aren’t you a linguist?” Dan asks. “Or a filmmaker?”

“Million pound question.”

“I’m joking,” Dan says, kicking him again. “I ended up getting a degree in philosophy. I’ll be paying my student loan off til I’m like eighty four. I only have the job I have now because the editor of an online music magazine stumbled across my blog and thought my bullshit ramblings were entertaining enough to publish.”

“That’s so cool,” Phil says, then adds, “Like objectively, outside of comparisons to my own situation.”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees. “It’s pretty great. I don’t know if it’s sustainable for like, my lifelong career, but I try not to worry about that too much. I find it better for my sanity to just live life one day at a time.”

“Maybe you could teach me how to do that.”

“Why’d you go to school for so long?” Dan asks.

“I dunno. I liked it, I guess. I knew exactly what I was meant to be doing. All I had to do was, like… learn.”

Dan lolls his head against the back of the sofa. He couldn’t look more at home if he tried. “Huh. I guess the learning part is good. It’s all the other parts that’re shit.”

“I think I liked pretty much all the parts,” Phil says. “That’s why I stayed so long.”

“Can’t relate.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Manchester,” Dan says. 

“No way.”

“What?”

“That’s where I’m from,” Phil says. “My mum wanted me to go there so I’d be close, but I was desperate to go away. I wanted some space from everyone who knew me so I could have a chance to be… you know.”

“To be?” Dan prompts.

“Gay.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Dan’s energy is unmistakably nervous, and Phil has to work hard not to let that freak him out. 

“So… were you?” Dan asks.

“Kinda, I guess. I tried. Mostly I just turned down a lot of hookups I knew would lead nowhere.”

Dan cocks his eyebrows. “Sex is nowhere?”

Phil’s response is more frank than he means for it to be. “I don’t much care about sex without the rest of it.”

“Soulmate syndrome,” Dan says knowingly.

“What?”

“You didn’t see the point in dating people who weren’t your soulmate.”

Phil bristles instantly. He likes to fancy himself a laid back type of person, and he avoids conflict like the plague, but Dan’s judgment of and apparent disdain for something Phil believes in so deeply has him rattled. 

“Got me all figured out, then, do you?” he asks coolly. 

Dan shrugs, either missing the sudden left turn in Phil’s demeanor, or else ignoring it. “It’s a pretty common thing, although usually people go the other way with it. Sex without the rest of it, as you said. That’s what most people with soulmate syndrome do. You’ve got, like, the next step up.”

“I’m just fully diseased.” 

The look on Dan’s face tells Phil that his anger isn’t going unnoticed anymore, but before either of them can say anything else, a group of people walk into the shop. Phil stands up from the sofa. “Turns out I was well stupid for waiting, wasn’t I?” 

He doesn’t wait for a response. He goes behind the counter and takes a rather large order, and by the time it’s filled, Dan is gone.

-

Phil has a little cry that night. After he’s closed up the shop, after he’s gone back to his flat and had a dinner of dry cereal and climbed into bed. It’s quiet and contained, a few self pitying tears shed into the blue of his pillowcase. It’s not the kind of cry that gives him a headache, or one that goes and goes until he’s got no energy left to continue. 

Probably because he knows he overreacted today. Dan was being a bit of a dick, but Phil believes him when he says he has his reasons. The doubt goes both ways here, and Phil is trying to give Dan the benefit. All he really wants is for Dan to return the favour. 

Because Dan’s right, but he’s also wrong. Phil has viewed the world through a certain lens, one tinted in the shade of desire for the certainty of finding the one. He’s let it colour the way he thinks about love and sex and relationships and all of it. There hasn’t been a single romantic or sexual interaction he’s had where it hasn’t at least been swirling in the back of his mind, but Dan is wrong. 

Phil has dated people. He’s been on dates. He’s kissed and touched and fucked and even loved. He was in love for a time in uni, and those feelings weren’t dulled any for the fact that they weren’t forged through a cosmic bond. 

He cries a little more when thinks of that time. That man. Bright blue eyes like a tropical sea and a crooked grin. A wit that could make Phil laugh no matter how miserable he might have felt. A body that confirmed a thousand times over what he’d been wanting to confirm ever since he left the small-minded chokehold of the town he grew up in. 

The feelings weren’t dulled for their unbonded status, but they were definitely complicated, maybe even confused, and that’s why Phil cries when he thinks of Jimmy now. They were in love with each other and they let it slip away because some part of it felt futile. They tried to stay friends, but friends turned to acquaintances and slowly acquaintances drift apart, and now Jimmy is just someone that Phil used to know. And the pain of that was always softened by knowing someday Phil would have it again. Again and better, and he could always keep the memories of his first love. 

Now he’s not sure. Now he’s really not sure of anything. 

He opens up his phone and checks the time before ringing Ian’s number. It’s late enough that Emily will be asleep, but not so late that Ian will. Phil doesn’t particularly want to be alone with his thoughts anymore.

Ian answers with, “You’ve been screening my calls, you wanker.”

“Yeah.” No sense hiding it. “Sorry.”

“Tell me why.”

Phil sighs. “The guy came back.”

“The guy?”

“ _The_ guy.”

“Oh shit,” Ian says. “Oh _shit_.”

“Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t you be pleased?” Ian asks. “You don’t sound pleased.”

“He’s… It’s not what I thought.”

“Is he a dick? I mean, we knew he was a dick, he ran away like a little—”

“He was freaked out,” Phil interjects. “I can’t say I blame him.”

“You can,” Ian says. “It’s a free country.”

Phil huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I guess. But he did come back. He’s come back a few times now.”

“And it’s still not good?” Ian asks. “Is he a bad lay?”

“Jesus.” Phil shakes his head, digging the heel of his palm into his closed eye. “I don’t even know if he’s gay.”

“Maybe he’s bi,” Ian offers unhelpfully. “You should probably ask.”

“Oh right. Thanks for the tip.”

“I’ll be here all week.”

Phil shakes his head, but this time there’s fondness in the gesture. “How have we stayed mates for so long? We have nothing in common.”

Ian ignores him. “Phil, you’re like, super gay, yeah? Like you never even have a sneaky _think_ about minge?”

“Correct…”

“Then why in the hell would you think your soulmate wouldn’t be into dudes? That makes no sense.”

Phil shrugs. “He’s cagey. I dunno. He seems really freaked out by the whole thing.”

There’s a pause before Ian answers. “But he keeps coming back.”

There’s a longer pause before Phil speaks again. “Do you remember Jimmy?”

“Who?”

“Jimmy, the guy I dated up at York.”

“Oh. Uh… kind of? Not really. Sorry. You didn’t talk about him that much, did you?”

“I guess not,” Phil admits. “I hadn’t even been out to you for that long.”

“Are you feeling nostalgic?” Ian asks. His tone has shifted, and Phil can tell he understands now that Phil’s rung him up for more than stupid banter. “The sad kind?”

Phil bites his lip. He really doesn’t want to cry with Ian on the other end of the line. Maybe he’d have been safer ringing Cornelia, but technically she doesn’t know the truth of his situation with Dan. “I reckon I’m wondering why I’m the one person in the world who bonded with someone that doesn’t even like me.”

Ian just scoffs.

“What?”

“Lauren hated me at first.”

“No she didn’t.”

“Mate. She absolutely did. She thought I was a complete idiot.”

“You are,” Phil says.

“Yeah, exactly. It took her a long time to warm up to me.”

Phil frowns. “I don’t remember that.”

“We don’t exactly advertise it. No one wants to hear that part of the story, yeah? No one wants to hear about the parts that aren’t easy and like, magical.”

Phil feels… something. Something weird. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed or just more confused. “Huh.”

“If this bloke is coming back, I’d take that as a win.”

Phil thinks of the phone call he had with Dan last week. He thinks of sushi and how fast Dan agreed to go to Martyn’s show. He thinks of _see you_ , and says to Ian, “His name is Dan. I think you’d like him.”

“Only if he takes it easy on my mate,” Ian says.

Phil smiles at that, appreciating the rare moment of sincerity. He rolls over onto his back and says, “I’m scared to like him.”

Ian clicks his tongue. “Mate.”

“I know.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid.”

“I don’t even know. But you should go easy on yourself, too.”

“I’m glad Lauren didn’t give up on you,” Phil says. “You’re so much nicer now.”

“I’m a dad now, Phil. I’ve gone soft.”

He smiles. “It looks good on you.”

They talk for another half hour or so, in which Phil says no more about himself. He’s sick to death of himself. He wants to hear about Ian’s job and life with Lauren and how much little Emily has changed since the last time Phil saw her. 

They say goodbye when Ian is reminded by Lauren that he’s got work in the morning, and Phil hangs up feeling grateful for his people. So much of his life feels like a disaster, but at least he’s got friends who’ll take the time to talk him down when he needs it.

Speaking of disaster, right as Phil is about to roll over and go to sleep, his phone dings. Dan’s name flashes up on his screen, and Phil’s heart beats nervous quick as he swipes open on it.

_i did warn you it wouldn’t be the last time i was a dick. i’m hoping this won’t be the last time either_

Phil doesn’t answer. He slides his phone under his pillow and goes to sleep.

-

He spends the next two days trying to pretend he doesn’t care that Dan hasn’t texted again. He goes to work and tries to pretend he isn’t spending the whole time watching the door. He types at least twenty drafts of texts that ultimately end up deleted before they’ve had the chance to be sent. He finds Jimmy on instagram and spends a horribly ill-advised evening scrolling through photos of him looking fit as ever. There’s no obvious evidence of a boyfriend, and Phil recognizes how utterly daft it is to feel happy about that, but he does anyway. 

It turns out Jimmy lives in London now too, and works as a radio presenter. Phil stops himself from finding the show and listening in, but only just. He reckons there’s only so much self destruction he can handle, so he rings his mum up instead. She scolds him for not ringing more often and then asks if he’s applied to any promising jobs lately. He lies and says yes, not having the heart to hear disappointment in her voice. Maybe he’ll actually do it soon. 

They make plans for Christmas and talk about the latest episode of EastEnders. She doesn’t ask about Dan, which means Martyn hasn’t told her. He makes a mental note to be nice to him at his show tomorrow instead of complaining that the DJ sucks and the drinks are too expensive, like he usually does. 

Will he be alone in drinking those overpriced drinks? He’s not sure anymore, but he also can’t bring himself to ring Dan up and ask, or even shoot him a quick text. Enough time has passed that he mostly just feels like an idiot for overreacting. And then ignoring Dan’s olive branch. 

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe the universe made a mistake. For all anyone really knows, bonding means nothing. It’s entirely possible that people who’ve found their soulmate seem happy because they’ve forced themselves to feel that way. It could all just be a giant placebo effect and Dan is secretly a genius who knows the truth that everyone else is too stupid to recognize. 

Phil is stupid. He’d been hooked into the whole thing, line and sinker and all that. 

And what about powers? Are those imagined too? It would make sense. Martyn was always lucky. Cornelia was always musical. Ian was always good with numbers. Phil’s dad was always artistic and his mum was always a good cook, or at least that’s what he’s been told.

The thought suddenly occurs to him that he could ask his mum. She’s been married to her soulmate for something like thirty years, surely she’d have a few answers for him. But then she tells him she’s tweaked her recipe for mince pie and it’s even better than before and the moment passes. She’s got her mind on the holidays and having her boys home again, and he’s not brave enough to risk letting slip the news that he’s met the one and is still as lost as ever. 

He feels like a teenager again, keeping such a huge secret from her, and it’s as bad a feeling now as it was back then. It’s isolating. Alienating. Guilt twists up his stomach like he’s doing something wrong, but his mum keeps talking, and eventually the thought of sitting at the table in his parents’ kitchen for a week being plied with baked goods and unconditional love soothes the ache of the rest of it. 

He buys the plane ticket when he gets off the phone with her, then watches random crap on his phone until he’s too tired for his worries to keep him awake any longer. 

When he wakes up he’s got a text from Dan. It takes him a shower and two cups of coffee’s worth of time to work up the courage to open it. When he does, it reads: _do you still want me to come tonight_

Phil doesn’t think before sending Dan the time and address. Thinking never leads him to anything but more thinking, and that hasn’t really gotten him anywhere lately. He’s thinking himself in circles. If he lets it continue, he could be stuck in the same damn spot for the rest of his life. 

-

Cornelia is at the shop when he gets there. More than that, she’s stood behind the bar attempting to make a drink for an actual paying customer. Phil chucks his coat in the back and rushes to help her before she can burn herself or hand off a drink that’s undrinkable. 

“Seriously,” she says when the shop is theirs again. “You need to at least teach me the basics.”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he says. “I was…” He trails off, unable to come up with an excuse in time for it to sound believable.

“Nervous for tonight?” she asks in that soft voice of hers.

“Why would I be nervous? I’ve been to a million of Mar’s shows.”

She tilts her head and looks at him in a way that communicates clearly that to continue to pretend she doesn’t know what’s going on would actually be offensive. 

“I’m nervous,” he confirms. 

“Are we allowed to talk about it?”

Phil shakes his head. 

“That sucks,” she says bluntly. “I’m so curious.”

He laughs a little. Her honesty is refreshing. “Does Mar know?”

She bites her lip guiltily and nods. “Theorizing about you two has become our new favourite hobby. Sorry.”

“Oh, for—” He grabs a shot glass and hands it to her before hopping up onto the counter. 

“What’s this?”

“I’m gonna teach you the basics.”

She frowns. “Are you trying to distract me?”

“No, I’m trying to distract myself.”

He spends the better part of the day teaching her what she needs to know to make a passable latte and taste testing every single attempt. It works well as a distraction, and by mid-afternoon he’s practically vibrating under his skin from all the caffeine. 

He also wants to go home, even though business has definitely continued to pick up the further into December they get. 

“D’you think Mar is actually gonna hire another person?” he asks. He’s taking a little break, sat on the yellow sofa with his legs dangling over the armrest.

She looks back at him from where she’s flipping through the records. There’s hesitance written all over her face, but she doesn’t say anything.

He narrows his eyes at her. “What?”

She turns back to the records, picking one out and standing up. “Look… There are things I’m not allowed to talk about either.”

Anxiety punches at his chest instantly. “What?”

She puts the record in the player and lowers the tone arm down carefully. As usual, he’s got no idea what it is that starts to play. She walks over to him and he lifts his legs so she can sit.

“I’m sorry, Phil. He made me promise not to say anything.”

“Anything about what?” he presses. 

She sighs. “There are… things. Plans. But they’re still in the works and I’m not allowed to speak about them yet. I’ve already said more than I should.”

He drapes his legs over her lap and listens to the man on the record sing about love tearing him apart. It feels fitting, even if it really isn’t. Phil’s not in love, but he appreciates the sentiment. “Who is this?”

“Joy Division,” she says.

“He doesn’t sound joyful.”

“That he doesn’t.”

“I like it,” Phil says.

“Me too.”

“Corn.”

She looks at him.

“You’re right,” he says. “Secrets suck.” 

She reaches out and touches his arm. “They won’t be secrets forever, yeah?”

Phil shrugs. “You lot are gonna go off and be rock stars or something and I’m gonna be alone forever.”

She actually laughs at him. “I hope the first part is true, but the second is a load of rubbish and you know it.”

Phil just grumbles, throwing his arm over his eyes. He’s playing it up a little, but he reckons she knows that, and sometimes it’s nice to be overdramatic with impunity. 

“You’re not gonna be alone, Phil. The man brought you sushi.”

“He also thinks the concept of soulmates is bullshit.” 

She raises her eyebrows.

“Oops. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“So he’s a bit… complicated,” she says. “I’m sure he’s got his reasons.”

“Ugh, I know. That’s what he says.” He bends his knee and nudges a toe gently into her thigh. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. As far as you’re concerned he’s a mate from uni.”

“Right.” She mimes zipping her lips shut. 

“I’m serious.”

She nods. They sit there for a while listening to music until customers arrive, and when Phil gets up, Cornelia does too. She works the cash while Phil makes the drinks and it’s nice. 

He’s glad she knows. There’s definitely a little bit less weighing down his shoulders, even if he can’t really talk about it.

“You were here to babysit me today, weren’t you?” he asks when they’ve tired of working and decided to close up for the day.

“Yeah,” she admits easily. “We knew you’d be going through it, but Marty had to prepare for the show.”

Phil nods, shrugging into his coat. “You got stuck with me.”

“Yeah, it was really terrible.” She stands on the tips of her toes so she can reach his hair to ruffle it. “I’ll see you in a few hours, yeah?”

“Yeah.” He closes the door to the shop and locks it behind him, shivering as the cold air bites at his hands. 

Before they part ways and head in their own directions she says, “Wear something blue tonight. It brings out your eyes.”

-

He does wear blue, a dark blue button up and black jeans and the cologne that’s been sitting untouched in his bathroom cabinet for months. He resists the urge to fuss too much with his hair lest it become a shiny over sprayed rock on top of his head. 

He takes the tube, hand wrapped around the phone nestled inside his pocket the whole way. He’s waiting for Dan to text and say he’s changed his mind, and Phil’s worked himself up about this night so much that he’s not even sure if he’d feel more relieved or disappointed. Undoubtedly it would be some combination of the two.

He gets there a little bit late, which is wildly out of character, but he knew he’d rather be nervous on the train than nervous in a huge noisy club. He checks his coat and meanders through groups of bouncing people. His shoes seem to stick a little to the ground as he walks.

Martyn hasn’t gone on yet but someone else has, and there are already way more people than Phil would like to be spending his Friday night surrounded by. The music doesn’t resemble anything Phil could call himself a fan of, but objectively he understands the appeal. It mostly serves as a backdrop for people to get drunk and sweaty and move their bodies around in frantic ways that could only generously be referred to as dancing. 

He’s been to enough of Martyn’s shows not to feel entirely overwhelmed by it all, but his heart is thrumming nervously as he scans the dark room. The crowd is lit by moving spotlights in various neon colours and he’s almost one hundred percent certain that Dan could be stood directly in front of him and he wouldn’t be able to tell, but he looks around anyway. He sees a lot of colourful hair and facial piercings and body glitter, but no Dan. At the risk of seeming over eager, he pulls his phone out after about five minutes and types out a quick text. _i’m here_

Dan texts back almost immediately: _waiting in the queue won’t be long_

Phil’s immediately goes to work distracting himself by sending Martyn a good luck text, and then one to Cornelia that’s just a series of scared-faced emojis. She texts back her encouragement and tells him to come find her later.

He’s genuinely considering texting Ian when there’s a break in the music and he hears his brother’s voice projected loudly as he greets the people who’ve come to see him - and then two things happen nearly at the same time: a group of girls right near the front of the stage start screaming, and something briefly touches Phil’s lower back. He turns and Dan is there, wearing a sort of fuzzy looking black jumper with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows.

“Just in time.” Phil has to almost shout to be heard.

Dan nods. He looks like he’s had a haircut. The top is still a cascade of brown waves over his forehead, but the sides are buzzed short. His shoes must have a bit of a lift, because tonight he stands decidedly taller than Phil.

He looks good. Hot, even. It’s unnerving. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Phil says. 

Dan opens his mouth to say something, but at that moment Martyn begins his set and his fans’ screaming intensifies, so Dan has to take a step closer and lean in right next to Phil’s ear when he speaks. “Your brother has gotten a lot more popular since the last show I went to.”

Phil laughs, turning his head slightly to get next to Dan’s ear. “He’s lucky, haven’t you heard?”

“He’s good,” Dan says. “And he’s been working at this for years. It’s honestly impressive.”

Phil knows he should feel happy for his brother, and he does. But he also can’t seem to shake the petty jealousy. Even his own soulmate is taken with Martyn. It feels unfair. “I think I need a drink,” he blurts.

Dan tilts his head toward the bar. “Come on.”

It’s clear Dan’s been here many times before. He leads Phil to the bar like he owns the place, weaving through groups of people with a palpable sense of ease. Phil has been here before too, but he definitely doesn’t share in this ease, and eventually he has to reach out and grab a handful of the back of Dan’s jumper so they don’t get separated. Dan just looks back at him with a bemused expression and leads on.

Phil is pretty sure he’s already fucked. He’s becoming more attracted to Dan by the minute. 

It doesn’t help that Dan forgoes beer or shots and orders Phil a drink that looks like it actually tastes good, and then pays for it by sliding a tenner to the bartender all casual like he’s the lead in a film or something. He holds his glass up and says, “Cheers.” Phil clinks his glass against Dan’s and forgets not to watch as Dan closes his lips around his straw.

Then he remembers, looking away quickly and taking a huge sip of his own drink. It tastes like sweet whiskey and lemon. He takes another long drink hoping the alcohol will do its job and lubricate his social awkwardness sooner rather than later. 

“It’s so weird that you know about Martyn’s music.”

“Like I said, it’s my job.” Dan picks up his drink and starts walking away from the bar, so Phil follows. “I think I’ve heard of Cornelia too.”

“What?” Phil shouts. “Seriously?”

“She’s from Sweden, right?”

Phil stops walking, his mouth just kind of hanging open a little. 

Dan stops too, smirking as he elbows Phil in the side. “Look, I’m gonna get offended if you keep being surprised that I’m actually good at my job. It’s pretty much the only thing I _am_ good at, so let me have it.”

“She’s gonna be so freaking chuffed when I tell her,” Phil says finally.

Dan smiles a crooked little half smile that strangely makes Phil think of Jimmy for a moment. That’s dangerous and he knows it, putting Dan in the same category as someone who’s seen Phil naked. 

“Will your brother be offended if we’re not front and center?” Dan asks.

Phil shakes his head. 

“Good, come on then.”

Phil manages to follow along this time without turning Dan into a guide dog, but only just. They make their way to the corner of the club and then up a sort of dodgy looking set of stairs. There’s a bouncer at the top, but he must recognize Dan because he lets them through, into a room that’s equally full of people but somehow less frantic than the energy downstairs. There are sofas along the back wall and a balcony that gives a perfect view of the stage below. 

“Wow,” is all Phil can say. It’s still loud, but he doesn’t quite have to shout to be heard anymore.

“Wanna sit?” Dan asks.

Phil nods, following Dan to a leather loveseat in the corner. He sits, clutching his drink with both hands. He’s not sure he’s ever felt so thoroughly out of his depth. “I didn’t even know there was a balcony. I guess I never looked up.”

Dan sits, and the couch is small enough that their shoulders press together. He turns his head and looks Phil dead in the face. “Are you still pissed at me?”

The straightforwardness is so disarming it makes Phil laugh. “Uh… I dunno. I guess not.”

“I was actually surprised you still let me come.”

Phil frowns. “Let you?”

“I told you I could be a dick, but I thought I’d be able to keep it in check longer than that.” He looks down at his drink. “Sometimes I don’t even know I’m being one until it’s too late.”

“It’s okay,” Phil says. He doesn’t know what else to say. Mostly he’d just like not to think about it anymore. “We don’t have to talk about the…” He makes a vague hand gesture knowing Dan will understand.

Dan nods. “That might be better.”

“Am I still at fifty one percent? I hope I haven’t, like, regressed my odds.”

It’s Dan’s turn to laugh. “Shut up. Don’t be so eager to hear about my baggage.”

“Why not? You already know a lot of mine.”

Dan looks at him like he’s just realized something. “Is your brother the only person you know who’s bonded?”

“I thought we weren’t gonna—”

“I’m not gonna be a cunt about it, I promise.”

“My parents are,” Phil says cautiously. “And my mate Ian.”

“The one who lives in Manchester?” 

Phil is immediately endeared by the fact that Dan remembered that. “Yeah, that one.”

“And they’re all happy?”

“Obnoxiously so.”

Dan just keeps looking at Phil thoughtfully. “That makes sense.”

“Stop psychoanalyzing me,” Phil demands. 

“Mm, sorry. Don’t think I can now.”

“Give me something to analyze, then. Only fair.”

Dan takes a long sip from his straw. “Not drunk enough for that yet. Not even close.”

Phil looks around. “Does this fancy balcony room have its own bar?”

Dan laughs at him, but in a nice way. The sound of it is warm, and the dimple appears in the middle of his cheek. “No. It’s not that swish. But I’ll make you a deal?”

Phil frowns suspiciously. “What?”

“I’ll buy us a bottle of something that’ll get us drunk. To make up for… everything.”

“You want to tell me your secrets,” Phil muses. “You’re just looking for an excuse.”

“Maybe. Maybe I just think I can get more out of you.”

“And why would you wanna do that?”

Dan looks down, teeth sunk into the chapped pink of his bottom lip, clearly trying to hide a smile and Phil realizes what’s happening with sudden clarity - they’re flirting. 

He actually wishes he was drunk. He wishes he was bold enough to push it further.

Dan stands up. “I’ll be back.”

“Okay Arnold.”

Dan smirks. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Phil most definitely doesn’t go anywhere. He sits there drowning in hummingbird heartbeats, ignoring the straw and downing the rest of his cocktail in one long swig.

It’s been so long since he felt anything like this. He’d forgotten what it was like, how intensely dichotomous a place it is, straddling the line between excitement and fear. And while it may have been ages since he’d done any real flirting that didn’t involve dating apps and naughty photos, he’s not far enough removed not to notice when someone is flirting back. 

When Dan returns, his hand is wrapped around a disconcertingly large bottle of Malibu. 

“Wow,” Phil says, a sarcastic lilt to his voice. “Just when I thought this night couldn’t get any better.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like coconut.”

“I love coconut. This isn’t coconut. I reckon it barely even counts as alcohol.”

Dan twists the top off, wraps his lips around the rim and tilts his head back. He makes a face when he pulls off, and wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his jumper. “Tastes like alcohol to me.” He hands it out to Phil.

Phil’s not exactly keen, but far be it from him to be any kind of buzzkill tonight, so he takes it and glugs some back, hissing as he swallows. “Oh god, it’s even worse than I remembered.”

Dan nods, leaning back into the cushion of the couch. “Tastes like teenage misery.”

“Teenage Misery,” Phil echoes. “That could be a band name.”

“A band of which I could have definitely be a member.”

Phil raises his eyebrows, but Dan waves his hand dismissively. “Oh come on, who isn’t miserable as a teenager?”

“I wasn’t.”

Dan takes another swig and hands the bottle to Phil. “Bullshit.”

Phil grabs his empty cocktail glass and tips some of the Malibu into it. It feels ever so slightly less adolescent than drinking straight from the bottle. He makes sure his pinky is up as he takes a dainty sip. “You’re bullshit,” he says. 

“Your mum is bullshit,” Dan retorts.

Phil slaps his hand on his chest like he’s been wounded. “You cut me deep.”

“Apologies. How can I ever make it up to you?”

Phil grins. “Tell me about your teenage misery.”

Dan picks up the bottle and takes a nauseatingly long drink from it. “I drank a lot of lukewarm Malibu,” he says.

“Is that your way of telling me that hanging out with me is miserable?” Phil asks. 

The smug look drops from Dan’s face. “No. I just thought it would be funny.”

“I’m joking.” Phil knocks his knee against Dan’s, and it seems to work to assure him Phil’s not actually upset.

“I asked for lukewarm Smirnoff Ice, because that would’ve fit better, but they didn’t have that.”

“Fit better?” Phil asks.

Dan nods. “More teenage experimentation than teenage misery. Although the inevitable vomiting was _well_ miserable.”

“Wow. You were already a lush by age sixteen, then?”

“Fifteen actually,” Dan says.

“Why does experimentation fit better?” Phil asks. “What are you experimenting with right now?”

Dan shrugs. “Whatever this is, I guess.” His voice is suddenly much softer and distinctly more vulnerable.

Phil decides not to push it any further, instead asking, “And back then?”

Dan tilts his head a certain way and gives Phil the same look Cornelia had given him earlier. The ‘come on, mate’ look.

Technically it’s a big moment, an answer to a question over which Phil has been agonizing for weeks. The confirmation is a relief, and the punching of his heart against his chest wants him to treat it as such, but he’s not sure that’s a reaction Dan would appreciate. Maybe it was supposed to be obvious all along.

He buys himself a few seconds by taking a slow drink through his straw, then settles on a reaction of quiet surprise. “Experimenting at fifteen. Wow.” The he tacks on, “That’s impressive.”

“It was a very select group of people,” Dan says. “Basically a weekly game of drunken bisexual spin the bottle between a handful of hopelessly confused wannabe emos.”

Phil chuckles. “Oh man. What would any of us closeted gays have done without spin the bottle?”

“Yeah.” Dan doesn’t laugh, or even smile, and Phil senses this isn’t a topic he actually wants to spend much time discussing. It’s not exactly difficult for Phil to see that Dan’s baggage is almost certainly at least partially sexuality related. 

It suddenly dawns on him that maybe Dan’s present tense experimentation with _this_ may not be all that different than the experimentation of his teenage years. That maybe Dan continuing to show up is a genuine act of bravery. 

Phil can only think to thank him by abruptly changing the subject. “I know nothing about music,” he blurts. “And it seems I’m doomed to be constantly surrounded by experts.”

Dan’s smile returns. “I’m sure you know _something_.”

“Only what I’ve learned by osmosis from Mar and Corn.”

“You’ve always had cool stuff playing in the shop.”

“I don’t buy the records.”

Dan picks up the bottle of rum and reaches across Phil’s body to top up Phil’s glass, then takes a long swig for himself. “I’ll take you out sometime and we’ll pick some together.”

There’s a tingly sort of warmth spreading through Phil’s body, and he’s fairly certain he can’t give the booze all the credit. “Yeah?”

Dan nods. “The stuff you’ve got now is good, but you need to diversify.”

“What, not enough Britney?” Phil teases.

“Look, people like to take the piss, but pretty much every single one of her songs fucking slaps. Anyone who says otherwise is just sexist.”

“Okay, so definitely more Britney.”

“Just… more,” Dan says. 

“What about Muse?” Phil asks. “Is Muse considered good?”

Dan turns his whole body to face Phil’s. “You like Muse?”

He’s suddenly wary, unsure of the nature of Dan’s surprise. “Is it uncool to say yes?”

“I fucking love Muse. Like, old Muse. They got me through…” He looks away, pulling the sleeves of his jumper down over his hands. “Anyway,” he says after a long pause. “They helped me survive my teenage misery.”

Phil can’t seem to stop saying things that make Dan upset. He has to tamp down the instinct to reach out and touch Dan’s knee or sling an arm around his shoulder in an attempt to comfort. “I’d like that,” he says instead. “To shop for records with you.”

“You say that now,” Dan says wryly. “But I can get… carried away.”

“How d’you mean?”

Dan shrugs. “When I like something, I _like_ it. And I have opinions. I’ve been told I’m not great at moderation. Or shutting up.”

“I love that, though,” Phil blurts without thinking, but he can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed. The rum is definitely starting to have an effect.

Dan just says, “We’ll see,” like the idea of anyone being endeared by him loving something loudly is ridiculous.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Phil knocks his knee into Dan’s again. “We _will_ see.”

Dan laughs. Phil decides he really likes making Dan laugh. He feels buoyed enough by hormones and fermented sugarcane and the desire to be the cause of more laughs to chug the rest of his drink and say, “Let’s go back downstairs.”

-

Phil can’t dance. He definitely wasn’t exaggerating about that, but luckily the movement required at shows like this really doesn’t qualify as dancing. There isn’t a ton of skill involved, just a lot of bouncing in time to a beat so loud it pounds in his bones. He kind of hates how much fun he’s having. He kind of hates that he might be starting to understand the appeal of his brother’s weird music. 

He doesn’t hate how often Dan’s body bumps against his. He doesn’t hate the way his insecurities have been pushed so far back for the moment that he can’t even remember what they were. If he looks ridiculous, he only looks as ridiculous as everyone else around him, and there’s something intensely freeing about that. He’s never been so happy to feel unremarkable.

His eyes catch on Martyn up there on the stage, bopping along to his own beat as much as he can while working his turntable. He’s having fun too, and Phil feels bad for every time he’s taken the piss over the past few years. He’s not sure if he’s actually having a moment of clarity, or if he’s just really, really drunk. He hopes it’s the former. Martyn has never been anything but a great brother, and he deserves to have the favour returned. 

That’s what Phil’s thinking when Dan’s body collides with his. He falls against Phil fully, chest to chest, laughing about it and taking his time to right himself again. He shouts something but Phil has no hope of hearing it over the blaring from the nearby speakers.

“What?” he shouts as loudly as he can.

Dan reaches out and hooks his hand around the back of Phil’s neck to pull him in. That would have been enough to make Phil’s whole body flood with heat, but then Dan leans in so close that his lips brush Phil’s ear. “I told you I couldn’t dance.”

Phil has an urge then, one he could act on and blame the Malibu if it all went wrong. If his life were a film, if he were a different person, he’d do it. But it’s not and he isn’t, and even wasted and sweaty in a dark club dancing to music so loud and deep it feels like a second heartbeat he knows he can’t take steps forward on a whim or a fleeting moment of confidence. Everything he’s learned about Dan leads him to believe that his treads must remain careful. If there really is something here, it can wait. Phil still believes it’s worth waiting for.

“You’re still better than me,” he shouts back.

They keep bouncing around and knocking into each other and laughing until Martyn’s set is over, then they find Cornelia. She’s there with a big group of her own friends, much to Phil’s relief. He knows she’ll have more than a few questions for him, but they’ll just have to wait. She gives them both hugs and Phil laughs at just how tiny she looks with one of Dan’s arms wrapped loosely around her shoulders. 

“Are you staying?” she asks.

Phil hasn’t even worked out his answer when Dan replies, “No, we’re off to hunt down some food, preferably cheap and greasy.”

“Are we?” Phil asks.

“Yeah, come on. I’m starving.”

“I’ll tell Mar you said hi,” Cornelia says to Phil. “I’ll tell him you had fun.”

“Don’t tell him I danced,” Phil says. “He doesn’t need the ego boost.”

She laughs and hugs them both again before returning to her friends. Phil grabs the back of Dan’s jumper once more and Dan leads them to coat check and then outside.

The wintry air feels a million times colder than it did a few hours ago, especially with the sweat still drying in Phil’s hair. He shivers, yanking the hood of his coat over his head, not caring in the slightest what it’ll do to his quiff. “Where should we get food?”

“Dominos,” Dan replies without hesitation.

“Is there one near here?”

“No, but my flat is.”

Phil’s eyes do a widening thing before he has time to stop them. “Your flat?”

“Yeah. Reckon I’ve just about hit my limit for being around other people today.”

“Oh.” Phil pauses a moment to try to disguise the disappointment that’s suddenly washing over him. “Alright.”

“Do you want pizza?”

Phil digs his hands into the pockets of his coat. He can see mist every time he breathes out, and the cold is definitely having a sobering effect. His confidence - or perhaps only ever just drunken bravado - is rapidly taking leave of him. Doubt is creeping back in. Does Dan want to be alone, or doesn’t he?

“I want pizza,” Phil says. Dan can do with that what he wants.

“Well let’s go then, I’m freezing my tits off.”

-

“I thought you said your flat was close,” Phil whines. “We’ve been walking for hours.”

Dan snorts. “It’s been like twenty minutes tops. We’re almost there.”

“I’m not gonna make it. My toes are ice cubes. My balls are raisins.”

“I hate raisins.”

“I do too, now,” Phil says, shivering for effect, though it’s only half put on. 

“Like who thought of that? Shriveled up grapes? Of all the things you could do with grapes.” Dan shakes his head in disgust. 

“They’re not that bad,” Phil says. “They’re not cheese.”

Dan stops walking so abruptly that Phil has to take a few steps back. “What?” Phil asks innocently.

“You… did you just compare grapes to cheese? _Cheese_? And come to the conclusion that raisins are superior?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you ill?” Dan asks.

“No. I just don’t like cheese.”

Dan reaches up and presses his palm flat against Phil’s forehead like he’s checking for a fever, but unfortunately Phil’s body reacts in a way he didn’t consciously permit. He shudders, then almost immediately scrambles to explain it away. “Your hands are so warm, what the hell.”

Dan shakes his head. “It’s still my turn to talk.”

“Oh. The cheese thing.” He’s relieved. Dan doesn’t seem to have even noticed the effect his touch just had.

“Uh, yeah mate. The cheese thing. Do you, like… do you think I’m bringing you round for something other than pizza?”

Phil stares at him blankly for too long before he understands what’s happening. “No! What? I— no.”

“Pizza is literally covered in cheese.”

“Pizza cheese doesn’t count.”

Dan just stands there looking at Phil, a deep frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows. “You are the strangest person.”

“I know,” Phil says sadly. 

He didn’t dare to think Dan had invited him round for something other than pizza, but he can’t deny to himself that a whisper of it had been holding space at the back of his mind. He wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but it felt like… progress. A gesture on Dan’s part, an acknowledgement that maybe the powers that be hadn’t made a mistake in pairing them up. 

He’s feeling humiliated. He’s feeling about as stupid as he’s ever felt, and suddenly dangerously close to expressing that all consuming disappointment through leaking eyes. 

But then Dan says, “It’s kind of awesome.”

It’s Phil’s turn to frown. “What?”

“It’s cool. I like it.”

“Like… me?” 

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Dan says, then shivers. “Can we go? I’m really not keen on raisin balls.” Then he scrambles to add, “Mine, I mean. I’m not keen on my own raisin balls.”

“But you’re keen on mine?” Phil smirks.

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.” Phil smiles wider. “You like me.”

“I take it back.”

“Can’t,” Phil says gleefully. “Against the rules.”

“Shut up.” Dan grabs Phil by the sleeve of his coat and tugs. “Let’s go. I just wanna eat some pizza.”

-

Dan’s flat is smaller than Phil’s. It’s a studio, essentially just one room. With just an initial glance Phil can see Dan’s bed, the kitchen, a sofa and a telly, a washing machine in the corner. It’s minimalistic and monochromatic and tidy, all the things Phil’s flat isn’t. It’s nice, but it doesn’t really _feel_ nice. It feels a bit cold to him, but he’s never really understood the appeal of sparseness. 

The windows are nice, though. They take up most of one wall, and Phil can only imagine how much light they let in during the day. 

They take their coats and shoes off and Phil stands in the entrance awkwardly, waiting for Dan to set the pace for whatever’s going to happen next. The Malibu has left a lingering buzz in his veins, but it’s not enough to completely erase his anxiousness. 

Luckily, Dan seems to know that it’s up to him to break this particular layer of ice. “Want a tour?” 

Phil nods gratefully.

Dan opens his arms and gestures at the space in front of them. “This is basically everything. Except the loo. That’s over there.” He points.

Phil nods. “It’s so… clean.”

Dan barks a laugh. 

“My flat usually looks like someone chucked a basket of laundry at it,” Phil says. “And a bucket of paint. And also dishes.”

Dan clicks his tongue. “I don’t function well when things around me are chaotic.”

Just then Phil’s eyes catch on something he hadn’t noticed at first, and for a moment he forgets his nervousness at being in his soulmate’s home for the first time and walks right over to a small white piano tucked in next to Dan’s bed. Ever since he was a child he’s been unable to resist a set of keys, even though he can’t play to save his life. He sits and plonks out the few notes he can remember of Jingle Bells. 

Martyn had tried to teach him once. Martyn is great at playing piano.

There’s a soft creaking sound and Phil turns his head to see Dan sat on his bed watching him. “Very seasonally appropriate,” he says, looking amused.

“That’s all I know.”

Dan reaches a long arm out and presses the right key to continue the tune. Phil copies and Dan keeps going, and together they finish a very choppy, very simplistic version of the song.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised that you’re not just a _fan_ of music,” Phil says. “Of course you make it, too.”

“I don’t. I just play other people’s songs.” His voice sounds sad.

Phil really doesn’t want him to be sad. “Play me something?”

Dan climbs off the bed and nudges Phil to move over on the bench so he can sit next to him. “If I was sober you couldn’t pay me to play when someone else was listening.”

“I played for you,” Phil offers. “There’s no way you’re gonna be worse than that.”

Dan starts playing. He’s not worse than Phil. Worse isn’t a word Phil would put in the same universe as Dan when his long fingers are tickling out something that sounds as pretty as what Phil’s hearing now. He makes mistakes. Even Phil can tell he’s not an expert. But it moves something in Phil to hear it, and Dan’s face as he plays tells Phil it moves something in him too. 

Dan fudges a note and stops playing abruptly. “Anyway.”

“That was so pretty.” 

Dan looks at him skeptically. “Right.”

“What was it?”

“Radiohead. I used to have a book of their sheet music. I wanted to learn every single song, but…” He trails off and then shrugs.

“Then what?” 

“I dunno, it was hard I guess. I never had proper lessons. I mean, I did for a little while when I was a kid, but my teacher was a witch from the pits of hell so I gave up eventually. I tried to teach myself how to do it but… I guess I slowly gave up on that too.”

“But you still have a piano.”

“I remember the songs I already learned,” Dan says, closing the lid over the keys. “But it’s been a while since I sat down to teach myself anything new.” 

Phil employs his favourite move of the night and knocks his knee gently against Dan’s. “I think you’re really good.”

Dan smiles. It’s nice. Phil reckons it’s a moment.

The pizza arrives. It has more vegetables on it than Phil would have chosen, but it’s the first food he’s had since his breakfast and they both make slightly obscene noises as they scarf it down. 

Phil learns that Dan really likes dips and that on any given day he’s either a strict vegan or a hoover for all things meat and cheese, no in between. “Moderation,” he says through a mouthful of barbecue sauce and potato wedge, “never heard of her.”

They both do that, actually, talk with their gobs full of greasy delicious food. They talk a lot, about Martyn’s show and Cornelia’s music and how much Dan loves his job. Dan asks and Phil tells how Martyn acquired the coffee shop from a family friend who couldn’t be bothered with it anymore, and how Phil had taken a job there after uni because it was an easy way to make rent while he worked out what he really wanted to do. Dan is kind enough not to point out that it’s been over a year and Phil’s still making mediocre lattes and listening to The Smiths all day.

Instead he says, “I think it’s brilliant that you and your brother actually like each other.”

“I mean, a lot of the time he drives me mental, but usually it’s not his fault.”

“I only see mine on the holidays I can’t get away with not going home for.”

“You don’t like going home?” Phil asks. “Where is home for you, anyway?”

“Wokingham, and I hate it.”

“Am I allowed to ask why?”

Dan smirks. “You can definitely ask.”

“Okay, why?”

Dan drops the piece of crust in his hand back into the box and sighs. “Bad memories. Bad vibes. You don’t wanna hear about that.”

“Yes I do.”

He looks at Phil a long time before he speaks. “My family doesn’t… get me.” He shakes his head. “That sounds so childish, wow.”

“I’m listening,” Phil says, hoping it sounds encouraging. Honestly, it _does_ sound a little childish, but Phil knows a thing or two about feeling pain that other people dismiss as trivial. 

“As soon as I’m there I just feel like a teenager again, and I worked really fucking hard to get as far away from that feeling as possible.”

“I think I get that,” Phil says. 

“I barely made it out of that place alive. Literally.”

Phil’s stomach drops. Before he can even begin to formulate an appropriate response, Dan says, “Fuck, sorry. Too much.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not.”

Dan smiles and shakes his head. “Tell me about your family instead.”

“Uh… they’re nice. I like them. It’s possible my parents spoiled me to the point that I’m a bit stunted now, but I’m not sure. Maybe that’s just my own fault. Martyn seems to be doing fine.” He hears himself back and immediately regrets it. “Not that having nice parents who spoiled me is something I should go around complaining about. Sorry. I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “You are.” He’s grinning ear to ear.

Phil smiles back. “Oi.”

“That’s interesting, though. I’d never thought about how much support is too much, since I never really had any.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Phil says sadly. 

“Don’t,” Dan says. “It’s shitty and tonight’s been fun.”

“It has,” Phil agrees. “I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.”

There’s a lull in conversation then, and Phil think it’s probably exactly the right time for him to excuse himself so he doesn’t overstay his welcome or make things awkward.

But he doesn’t want to excuse himself. He’s not ready for the night to be over. He looks around Dan’s flat and points to the first thing that catches his eye. It’s a poster above Dan’s bed, a shirtless black man with a green buzz cut and a bandaged finger hiding his face with his hand. “Who’s that?”

Dan cocks an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Oh, is it a music thing? I told you I know nothing about music.”

“Fair enough. It’s Frank Ocean.”

“Oh I think I’ve heard Corn talk about him. You like him?”

Dan chuckles. “Like would probably be an understatement. This sounds cheesy and daft but he’s kind of, like… my hero.”

“Wow.”

“I’ve written many an article about his genius.”

“I’ve never listened,” Phil admits.

Dan is digging his phone out of his pocket instantly. “Tonight you’re gonna learn, mate.” He starts something playing and puts the phone on the coffee table, then shuffles down into the crease the cushions create in the sofa.

Phil follows suit. About two songs in, Dan closes his eyes, and after that, Phil can’t look away from him. If it’s possible, the guy gets better looking with every minute that passes.

It’s probably psychological. Phil’s never had a problem recognizing another person’s attractiveness, but for him to feel something deeper takes time. It takes getting to know what that person is like. 

He reckons he really likes the person Dan is, and that’s why his face looks heartbreakingly beautiful at the moment, listening to his own personal hero croon in a darkened lounge that still smells like pizza. 

Phil doesn’t know the first thing about what makes a song objectively good. He wouldn’t be able to pick these songs out of a lineup and explain what makes them more artful or clever than any other rap or hip hop or R&B or whatever it is. But he likes the way it sounds, and he likes the look of peace it’s put on Dan’s face. 

Eventually his own eyes fall shut too and when he opens them again all is quiet. Dan is still next to him on the sofa, sleeping soundly as Phil had been only a moment ago. 

Phil’s neck is sore. And his back. Actually, his whole body feels a vague ache, and then he remembers the dancing. He pulls his phone out to check the time. It’s early, but not that early. He should go, for real this time. 

He doesn’t wake Dan, but he does leave a little note for him next to his phone on the coffee table. _thanks for the pizza and the musical education. frank is great! 10/10 would listen again. also you snore. xo_

He debates that last bit for an agonizing five minutes. Not the snoring, that bit is actually true, and also gentle enough to be extremely endearing. The xo bit. It feels conspicuous and over the top and clingy. As soon as he writes it it seems to jump off the paper at him, but he leaves it. One last little act of bravery before he rings for a car to take him home. 

-

Cornelia whisks him off a few days later in the middle of a shift, leaving Martyn in charge of the shop. She says they’ve both got Christmas shopping left to do - which is true - but it’s not the whole truth. It’s clear she’s also set her sights on prying loose as many details of the date with Dan as Phil is willing to part with.

Which honestly isn’t many. He tells her they had fun. He tells her they got drunk on cheap coconut rum and ate pizza after the show, and that’s about it. The whole night feels like a fever dream, like something special that he’s not eager to share with anyone else. He reckons she doesn’t need details to see that Phil is feeling happier than he has in ages. He knows it’s written all over his face. He’s only traded a handful of texts with Dan since then and he still kind of feels like he’s floating. 

They’re walking arm in arm down the pavement, headed for a music shop that specializes in guitars. Martyn can barely play, but Corn says she wants to teach him and he wants to learn, so it’s the perfect gift. Phil thinks it’s awfully extravagant, but perhaps that’s because he barely makes minimum wage. And maybe it’s also just that signature petty jealousy he’s been sporting ever since he moved to London. He knows how painfully terrible it would be if he ever attempted to learn how to play… well, anything, guitar included. 

Then his mind provides him a distraction, wondering if Dan knows how to play the guitar. It’s a nice mental image, Dan with his head bent low in concentration as his long fingers pick the strings to fill the air with a pretty acoustic rendition of his favourite Frank Ocean song. 

“Phil,” Cornelia says insistently, and he realizes she’s probably said it more than once.

“Hm, what?”

She raises her eyebrows and points to the shop they’re stood in front of.

“Oh, whoops.”

“What’s going on up there?” She tips up on her toes and touches his temple with a gloved finger.

His stupid traitorous lips smile before he can tell them not to. She looks as pleased as he’s ever seen her look. “Thought so.”

“Shut up. Obviously I was thinking about… mince pies.”

She snorts.

“We’ll be up to our necks in them in less than a week!”

“I don’t think pie is the sweet thing you’re smiling about,” she says smugly, then walks into the shop. 

He follows her in and instantly feels out of place. The walls are decked out with guitars from floor to ceiling, and the guy behind the counter has a long beard and a sleeve of tattoos. Cornelia walks right up to him without hesitation to ask for help finding the right thing for Martyn and Phil makes himself useful by silently drifting away to the corner of the shop. 

He wanders aimlessly until he comes to a sale bin full of beat up looking notebooks of some kind. The handwritten sign stuck to the box with sellotape says they’re books of sheet music, they’re secondhand, and they’re a pound a piece. He assumes they’ll all be for the guitar, given that’s what the shop seems to specialize in, but once he starts flipping through, he sees that almost as many are for the piano. A minute more of perusing and he’s biting back a surprised squeal of delight. 

By the time they leave the shop, both he and Cornelia have their respective soulmates’ Christmas gifts sorted. The difference in money spent on said gifts is ridiculous, but Phil likes to think it’s the thought that counts. He hadn’t actually been planning on buying Dan anything, but this seemed too perfect a thing to pass up - almost like a sign from the universe.

“What now?” Phil asks, pushing the plastic bag handles up over his wrist so he can shove his hands into the warmth of his coat pockets. “More shopping, or is Martyn begging you to bring me back and relieve him?”

“Oh, uh, actually… he closed up about an hour ago.”

Phil frowns. He wouldn’t think anything of it if not for her clear hesitation to admit that to him. “I know being chill is kind of Mar’s whole deal, but like… this is the busiest time of year. Is the shop not a priority to him at all anymore?”

Cornelia looks pained. 

“He said he’d hire someone,” Phil reminds her. His stomach is tightening into a giant knot and he’s not even sure why. It’s not like he wants to be a barista forever, but the idea of losing it now feels terrifying. He thought he’d have more time to get his shit together. To figure out who he is and what he wants. 

“It’s not really my place, Phil.”

“Should I start looking for a new job?”

She looks like she might cry if he doesn’t lay off. “He’s got a lot going on,” she says in that maddeningly soft voice of hers. “All good things, but…” She looks away. “Something will probably have to give eventually.”

“So… me,” Phil says bluntly. “I’ll have to give.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not saying anything.”

He doesn’t want to be cross with her. He knows it’s not her responsibility to speak for Martyn, and it’s also not her problem that Phil has made himself dependent on a job he doesn’t even like. He knows all of this on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t actually translate into him acting like a mature adult. “Whatever. I’m gonna go home.”

“Alright,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry, Philly.”

“I know.” He leaves her there on the pavement holding a guitar that’s hardly smaller than she is, knowing he’ll be groveling for forgiveness soon, likely before the day is even done. 

-

He does end up on the phone before the next day dawns, but it’s not with Cornelia.

It’s late and he’s lying in bed trying to fall asleep and feeling sorry for himself when his phone starts buzzing where he’d shoved it under his pillow after settling for sending her an apology text instead.

He ignores it. If it’s Corn, he doesn’t want to answer. If it’s Martyn he _definitely_ doesn’t want to answer. 

It stops.

Then it starts up again, and again he ignores it. 

On the third go ‘round he huffs angrily and fishes it out to switch it to do not disturb, but quickly changes his mind when he sees that the screen is lit up with Dan’s name. “Hello?”

“Did I wake you?”

Phil laughs. “You rang new three times in a row, do you actually care if you woke me?”

“No. I was just wondering since it took you so long to answer.”

“You didn’t wake me.”

“What are you up to?”

If it were any other guy ringing him at nearly one in the morning asking him that, Phil would assume it was for a very specific purpose. But this is Dan, so he really has no idea what to expect. “Nothing,” he says. “You?”

“Oh, you know. Just lying here. Thinking.”

“Always a bad idea.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Dan says. “I was hoping you’d be up and needing distraction, too.”

“And if I wasn’t you were just gonna keep ringing til I was?”

“Yup.”

Phil laughs again. “Alright, well. Here I am.”

“There you are.” Dan’s voice is much deeper tonight than Phil’s ever heard it before, and the sound of it right up next to Phil’s ear is something he could quickly become addicted to. 

“What were you thinking about?” Phil asks. Probably not the best distraction tactic, but it’s the first question that pops into his head.

“Uh… well. You, I guess.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“You rang me to distract you from thinking about me?”

Dan laughs all quiet and breathy. “Yeah.”

“Why don’t you wanna think about me?” 

“Shut up.”

Phil is bolstered by the sheepishness in Dan’s sleepy voice. “You rang me to distract you from thinking about me and now you’re telling me to shut up. Does that mean thinking about me is back on the table?”

“I hate you.”

“Not according to you,” Phil says. His own voice sounds quite deep as well. He wonders if Dan likes that.

“You should never listen to me. I’m an idiot.”

“You’re an idiot for calling yourself an idiot,” Phil argues. “I’ve read your writing, you’re definitely not an idiot.”

“Wait, what? You did?”

“I did.”

“When?”

Phil rolls onto his stomach and squashes the side of his face into his pillow. “I looked you up after our— after the show. Like the next day. I was listening to Frank Ocean since I fell asleep the first time and it made me wonder if you’d ever written about it.”

“Oh god,” Dan croaks. “Why do I feel embarrassed?”

“Do you? You shouldn’t. Should I not have done that?” Phil’s babbling, suddenly nervous he went too far. “I wanted to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why he’s your hero.”

Dan is quiet for a moment. “Wow,” he says eventually. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t… you don’t need to apologize, I’m just… That’s really… nice.”

“Oh.” Phil smiles. “Okay. Good.”

“Did you find the article?” Dan asks. He still sounds incredibly nervous.

“I did. You write so well, and this is coming from an English language major. I know things.”

Dan laughs. “Well… thank you.”

“It almost made me feel like I could understand.”

“Understand what?” Dan asks.

“I dunno, like… music, I guess? And how much it can mean to people. Like, I see it from the outside all the time with Mar and Corn, but I dunno. I spent like a whole night reading your blog and it was just… nice.”

“Shit,” Dan says. His voice sounds muffled by something, like his face might be pressed into his pillow just like Phil’s is.

“Too sincere?” Phil jokes, trying to get ahead of the embarrassment he suddenly feels for letting himself get so earnest. 

“Mate, I… No. It wasn’t.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that,” he murmurs, even while knowing he’s about to say something even more vulnerable. “But it felt like I was getting to know a side of you I might not have otherwise.”

Dan is quiet again, for so long that Phil’s sure he went too far. 

But then: “You actually want that? Like genuinely?”

Phil’s heart is hammering, but he manages to say, “Yeah, I do,” without his voice breaking. “Is that alright?”

Dan laughs. “I don’t know, man. It scares the ever living fuck of out of me, if I’m completely honest.”

“Sorry.”

“You apologize too much.”

“Sorry.”

Dan laughs some more. “Stop, seriously. I’m trying to, you know— I’m trying. To say when I’m scared instead of just running away.”

“Do you want to run away?” Phil asks.

“No. That’s why I’m trying.”

“I’m not scary,” Phil offers, rolling onto his back. 

“Phil, you’re terrifying.”

“Why?”

Dan exhales deeply, like he’s preparing for something, but then he says, “Not sure I’m ready for _that_ much honesty.”

Phil can’t tell himself he isn’t disappointed, but Dan rang him for a reason. There’s something here, and Phil isn’t the only one who’s feeling it. So he changes the subject. “Tell me more about music.”

The breathy exhalations of amusement sound so soft and immediate in Phil’s ear that he can almost imagine Dan is laid right next to him. 

“Or just anything,” Phil adds. “You’re keeping me awake, so tell me things.”

“Okay, um… I bought you a Christmas gift today.”

“What, really? I bought _you_ a Christmas gift today.”

“Mine’s just small,” Dan says. “Don’t get excited.”

“Mine’s very small,” Phil says. “And too late, I’m already excited.”

“Guess this means we have to meet up before you go up north then, eh?”

“Damn. I guess it does.”

“Bummer.”

Phil is actually glad Dan’s not here, because that means he can’t see the giant daft grin on Phil’s face.

“You working tomorrow?” Dan asks.

“Always.” Then he pauses. “For now, anyway.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Yeah. Corn has been dropping hints that the shop might not be long for this world.”

“Shit, really?”

“It’s pretty pathetic how much it terrifies me.”

“Not knowing how much longer you’re going to be employed is a valid fear,” Dan says.

“I don’t even like my job. It was always supposed to be temporary.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

Phil sighs, annoyed with himself for even bringing it up. “I don’t even know. I’m not like you, I don’t have a thing.”

“A thing?” Dan asks.

“Yeah, like you and Mar and Corn all have the music thing, yeah? I don’t have anything like that. I like things, but there’s nothing that really stands out.” He’s quiet for a moment. He knows he should stop moaning, especially to a bloke he’s genuinely starting to fancy, but he can hear Dan breathing quietly on the other end of the line, waiting for whatever Phil’s going to say next. Listening. Maybe even caring. “I kind of sometimes don’t even feel like a real person. There’s a blank space where my personality should be.”

He’s not expecting Dan to laugh, but that’s exactly what Dan does. Just quiet, more breathy amusement that makes Phil feel warm even when it’s at his expense. 

“I’m glad my crisis is funny to you,” Phil says, though there’s no actual offense taken.

“Sorry, man, it’s just— do you actually believe that? That you don’t have a personality?”

“Mostly, yeah.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Phil’s stomach does an interesting thing at that. “Oh. Is it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Please, go on.”

“You’re a real person,” Dan says. “You’re actually a fucking great person.”

Phil’s insides really jumped the gun a moment ago. Now it feels like they’re trying to leap right out of his body. 

Before he can compose himself enough to respond, Dan says, “I’ve gotta go.”

“Oh, okay—”

“I’ll see you.”

“Will you?” Phil asks, and then, without regard for how desperate it sounds: “You promise?”

Dan laughs. “Yeah, mate. I promise.”

Phil spends the next ten minutes staring at the ceiling while his heart drums against his ribcage, and after that, he deletes every single dating app from his phone.

-

Phil is making a mocha for a woman with blue hair when Dan comes into the shop the next day. He’s got something rectangular wrapped in red plaid paper tucked under his arm and a bit of an apprehensive look on his face. Phil’s hands are the slightest bit jittery as he hands the drink off, and suddenly he feels all too aware of his face. What is he supposed to do with his mouth? He’s afraid of smiling too wide and giving away the degree of his nervousness, but he probably does anyway. He waves at Dan awkwardly and says a sheepish, “Hey.” 

Martyn looks up from his laptop. He’s sat on the yellow sofa as always, headphones pulled up over his ears. “Hey, it’s Dan,” he says, slightly too loudly as there’s probably something blasting in his ears.

Dan does that little two finger salute-wave thing he does. His own headphones are pulled down around the back of his neck and Phil realizes that night at the club was the first and only time he’s seen him without them. His hair is fluffy, his cheeks are pink, his legs are long. He’s dressed all in black, as always. Maybe his soulmate power is that he gets a little fitter every day, because at this point Phil feels like he can barely look at him.

It takes a surge of bravery for Phil to say, “Mar, take over for me for a sec?” If it was Cornelia he was asking, it might feel less conspicuous, but she’s not here today. He hasn’t spoken with her since yesterday’s not-quite-confession, actually. He was hoping she’d be here today so he could apologize in person.

Martyn looks vaguely curious, but he sets his computer aside and gets up. Phil looks at Dan and says, “One sec.” He pops into the back room and takes a moment just to breathe in and out deeply, hoping it’ll work to calm the nervous rhythm of his heart. It doesn’t, so he grabs the book of sheet music he’d wrapped hastily that morning and leans into the nerves to join Dan where he’s stood next to the sofa that’s closest to the window. 

Dan looks at the gift Phil’s holding and does that breathy laughing thing Phil loves so much. “Dear god, mate. What the hell is that?”

Phil holds it up. “It’s endearing!”

Dan reaches out and tugs gently on a flap of paper that wouldn’t be there if someone competent had done the job of wrapping. “Is it, though?”

“Shut up.” Phil takes the red rectangle from under Dan’s arm and studies it. “This is overkill,” he announces. “You’re just showing off.”

“You know what, I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” Dan says, taking the gift meant for him from Phil. “Because this thing is a bloody monstrosity.”

“Shut up and open it.”

“Oh.” Dan’s smile falters. “We’re opening them now?”

“Uh, yeah, of course. You think I have enough patience to wait? You don’t know me at all, clearly.”

“You go first then,” Dan says. 

Phil beams. “Okay.” He makes a show of feeling and examining the immaculately wrapped object. “I have absolutely no idea what it is,” he says sarcastically. It’s very clearly a record to add to the shop’s collection.

“I never said it was gonna be a huge surprise. Just open it already, you’re making me nervous.”

Phil obliges, ripping the paper to reveal a familiar pouty face saturated in pink. He laughs a little, tracing the outline of Britney’s bent arm. “I should have known.”

“Next year’s gift will be less predictable,” Dan promises. Only after the words have left his mouth does he seem to realize the depth of their implication.

Phil decides not to tease him for it. He’s too happy, and now absolutely desperate for Dan’s reaction to the fact that they both got each other Princess of Pop themed gifts. “Your turn!”

Dan is a little more restrained with his unwrapping technique. He’s smiling - until he gets the paper off and reads what’s written on the book’s cover. Phil can’t tell what emotion Dan’s experiencing, but it’s nothing like the amused chuckle he was expecting. Dan just stares at the book. Phil’s veins are full of ice water.

Then Dan looks up at Phil’s face. His expression is so intense. Phil can’t look away, even though he wants to. He has to say something. He opens his mouth, but before any words can come out, there’s something blocking the way. 

It’s so unexpected that he doesn’t register it all once. It feels like slow motion as he becomes aware of a hand hooking around the back of his neck and pulling him forward. Then something warm presses against his mouth.

It’s Dan. Dan’s mouth. Dan is kissing him.

Dan is kissing him, or trying to, anyway. And once Phil finally gets it, he kisses back. Record still in hand, he wraps an arm around Dan’s lower back and pulls him in close, giving in to all the butterflies exploding in his chest. It wasn’t in his head. It was all real.

There are no thoughts in Phil’s mind when he feels the particular softness of Dan’s tongue brush his. No thought, just feeling. Warmth and heat and relief and desire. Dan is clinging to his neck. Dan. _Clinging_. He doesn’t even care that Martyn is watching. He doesn’t care about anything right now, because Dan is kissing him. His _soulmate_ is kissing him. Enthusiastically. Maybe it’s not a placebo effect after all. Maybe he was right about this too.

Phil gets so lost in it all that he bites down on Dan’s lip. It’s not hard, not enough to cause pain, but it definitely has an effect. Dan makes a noise Phil’s sure will be branded into his memory for all eternity - and then Dan pulls away. He takes a step back, reaching up to touch his bottom lip like he can’t believe what just happened.  
To be fair, Phil can’t really believe it either.

But he doesn’t like the look on Dan’s face. It’s not the good kind of shocked. Dan takes another step back and says, “I have to go.”

It’s almost as if Phil’s response comes from someone else. “Of course you do.”

It’s blunt and mean and cold, all things Phil isn’t. 

“Happy Christmas,” Dan says, then turns and walks out. 

Phil doesn’t try to stop him. He takes the record out of its cover and puts it in the player. Britney’s stupid campy song fills the shop loudly, but Phil still turns the volume up. He flops backward onto the yellow sofa and laughs bitterly as he listens to the lyrics. They couldn’t fit his situation better if he’d written them himself.

When the song ends, the silence in the shop is deafening. 

And then Martyn says, “Well that was awkward.”

Phil throws his arm over his eyes. He can still feel a hint of something on his lips, like a phantom tingle where Dan had been only five minutes ago. “I fucking hate you.”

“Oh shit, straight to dropping f bombs.” He walks over to the door to the shop and locks it, then walks over to stand directly above Phil. “Shove over.”

Phil groans, sitting up to make room. Martyn sits. “Those old school mates, eh?” He bumps his shoulder against Phil’s.

“God, shut up,” Phil grunts. “I know you and Corn talk about us. I know you know we were never mates.”

“In my defense, you’re not very discreet.”

“He kissed me,” Phil says defensively. “I was an innocent bystander.”

“An innocent bystander sucking face with his attacker.”

Phil glares at him. “Well I doubt it’ll ever happen again, so don’t worry.” He tries to stand up, but Martyn gets hold of his arm.

“Do you want some sage advice? Brotherly wisdom? An inspirational speech, perhaps.”

“Ugh.”

“Right,” Martyn says. “Thought not.”

“What sage advice could you possibly have about being rejected?”

Martyn gives him an incredulous look. “You’re going to sit here and call what I just witnessed between the two of you rejection? With a straight face?”

“He left,” Phil says quietly.

“Yeah, and before that his tongue was in your mouth.”

“I don’t really want to spend my life with emotional whiplash.”

“Phil, come on. You just met.”

“He’s meant to be my bloody soulmate, Mar. D’you reckon Dad ever snogged mum in public and then immediately fucked off like it was all a big mistake?”

Martyn is quiet.

“Would you ever have done that to Corn?” The look on Martyn’s face is all the answer Phil needs. “I’m gonna go home.”

“Come round mine? Corny is better at this talking stuff.”

Phil shakes his head. He wants nothing more than to be alone. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“At this time tomorrow mum’ll be stuffing you full of biscuits and eggnog,” Martyn says, draping his arm across Phil’s shoulders. 

“Maybe sugar is my real soulmate,” Phil says pathetically.

“Mate, I don’t wanna, like, diminish whatever's going on at the moment, but… the bloke just made out with you in broad daylight, right in front of your brother. I got a real eyeful.”

“Lucky you,” Phil quips. 

“My point is it’s not over.”

Phil tilts his head and studies Martyn for a moment. “You’re right.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. Corn is way better at this talking stuff.”

Phil gets a nice shoulder punch for that one. It actually makes him smile. He gives back a little shove and then stands up. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t tell Cornelia.”

“Alright.”

Phil goes to the back room and puts on his coat. When he comes back out he asks Martyn, “You’re going to tell her, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

-

Phil’s always liked riding the train. It’s not as nerve wracking as flying, and he likes watching the scenery pass by out the window. Living in London, he sometimes forgets how green and pretty a country he lives in. He’s got his temple pressed against the glass and earphones in. Against his better judgement he’d stayed up all night reading every Dan article he could find and making a playlist of every Dan-approved artist he read about. He knew he’d be thinking about Dan either way, and he reckoned music was safer than replaying that kiss over and over in his mind.

It only sort of worked. Turns out Phil’s brain is more capable of splitting focus than he’d previously thought. So now he’s sat across from Cornelia on the train to Manchester with an earful of someone called FKA Twigs, thinking about Dan’s lips. How eager they were to part against Phil’s and taste him. How pink they were when they parted from Phil’s. How they gave Phil the answers just long enough to take them away again.

FKA Twigs may have answers for Dan, but they’re going right over Phil’s head. He skips to Radiohead and closes his eyes, picturing Dan’s fingers on black and white keys. He’s wondering what Dan is doing right now. Is he getting ready to go home to Wokingham? Is he sitting on the sofa looking out that giant window of his? Is he writing?

Is he thinking about Phil?

Phil could ring him, or maybe text. He could be the bigger person, come to terms with the fact that there’s something between them whether or not Dan wants the part where they kiss each other. He could reach out and tell Dan it’s alright, they can be friends, or whatever Dan wants. He could do that.

Maybe he will. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe on Christmas eve when he’s full of mince pie and hot chocolate and holiday cheer he’ll feel up to that. Today he’s still thinking about the kiss. He’s thinking about Martyn’s show and everything that happened afterward. He’s remembering the sound of Dan’s sleepy voice over the phone and his soft breathy laughs and he’s thinking he’s really not ready to let go of all the hope he’d felt that Dan was the one.

Dan _is_ the one. But that doesn’t actually mean shit if he’s actively choosing not to be.

-

Seeing his parents’ faces is bittersweet in a way it never has been before. They’re smiling widely, beaming at the sight of their boys and an almost daughter in law all getting off the train together. Phil heads straight for his mum’s open arms, clinging just a little longer than he usually would. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. His father’s embrace is one armed but no less heartfelt, and Phil has the urge to blurt it out all out right there on the platform.

He doesn’t, of course. He steps aside to grab his suitcase and get ahold of himself before he does something daft like start to cry. He really is happy to be back in Manchester. He always maintains there’s a certain smell up north that just feels like home. He’s happy he has an excuse not to think about the real world for a little while. He’s happy it’s Christmastime and he gets to sleep in his childhood bedroom with its green carpet and colourful duvet. There are so many things he’s happy about.

But he’s not happy. The overriding emotion definitely isn’t joy. He’s uncharacteristically quiet on the first half of the drive up to Rawtenstall, letting Cornelia and Kath speak enough for the five of them. The men chime in when they’re needed, but even then it’s mostly Martyn. Phil is like his dad; if he doesn’t actually have anything to say then he probably won’t.

But he can’t get away with that for long, not when it’s been months since he and his mother have been in the same room, and inevitably the conversation turns to exactly what Phil’s been dreading: what he’s been up to.

“Not much,” he says flatly. He can’t seem to summon the energy to make something up.

Ever the older brother, Martyn swoops in protectively and says, “He’s been running the shop pretty much single handedly.” He looks at Phil like he’s asking permission for something. “And…”

Phil shoots lasers from his eyes, or at least makes his best attempt. If Mar lets it slip that Phil is bonded now he’ll have no choice but to open the car window and jump out.

“And I’ve finally convinced him to start coming to my shows,” Martyn says. “He’s got an actual social life now.”

Playful ribbing. Phil approves of that, even if it does brush up against the truth he’s trying so desperately to keep quiet. 

“Still no proper job offers, then?” Nigel asks.

Phil’s insides clench. “Not yet.”

“You’re too capable to be working at a coffee shop,” his dad tuts.

Cornelia, who’s sat in the back between Martyn and Phil, puts her hand on his arm and says, “It’s actually a lot more difficult than you would imagine.” He turns from where his gaze has been focused on watching the drizzle of rain outside his window and looks at her face. She smiles gently. “He works just as hard as Martyn or I do, that’s for sure. Maybe harder.”

Nigel laughs. “Not that DJing is much better.”

Where words like that make Phil feel small, Martyn just lets them roll right off. “If you approved of my music, dad, it’d mean I was doing something very _very_ wrong.”

“I just don’t understand why you can’t do both,” their dad says. “Work for me, then do the music thing on the side.”

Phil hates how much better it makes him feel to know that their dad is almost as disappointed in Martyn’s life choices as he is in Phil’s. It makes him feel a bit less of a failure, while somehow simultaneously driving home how out of touch Nigel is, and therefore how big a grain of salt to take when ingesting his opinion. Martyn is a genuinely brilliant person, and he’s passionate about what he does. If that isn’t acceptable, then maybe Phil doesn’t want to be accepted. 

He doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows for sure he doesn’t want a job like his dad’s. He doesn’t want to wear a suit and sit at a desk. Honestly, he’d probably rather just continue making lattes.

Martyn clearly agrees. “I don’t want to work for anyone,” he declares. “Not even you, dad. I tried that. I like being my own boss better.”

“He likes being _my_ boss better,” Phil adds, jumping on the opportunity to make his shame and anxiety into an easily digestible joke.

“That too,” Martyn agrees, grinning. 

Cornelia gives Phil’s arm a squeeze. 

“As long as you’re happy, Mar,” Kathryn says, reaching over and rubbing the space between Nigel’s shoulder blades. “And Phil, you’ll figure it out, won’t you love? You’re still young, you’ve got time.”

He bites back a bitter laugh. “Sure do.” At the moment it feels like time is one of the only constants in his life.

Although, come to think of it, not even that is a guarantee. He could be hit by a bus tomorrow. His dad could lose control of the car right this very second. So then nothing in life is constant. Nothing is predictable or trustworthy but the idea that it could all be gone in a moment.

But that’s not a path down which he wants to let his mind wander, so he pops his earphones back in and turns the music up. Being sad about Dan is probably better than having a full-on existential crisis in the back seat of his parents’ car. 

Luckily, talk of Phil’s failing to make something meaningful of his life is left at that, and the next few days are spent the way Phil had hoped they would be: eating too much sugar and wrapping gifts and listening to Christmas music and forcing his family to play board games with him. Sitting at the table and drinking coffee while his dad sketches and Cornelia writes and Martyn helps Kath make a yule log. Staying up late playing old nostalgic video games with Martyn and waking up because he feels like it and not because an alarm is telling him he’s got somewhere to be. He doesn’t have anywhere to be. Nothing is expected of him in this blissful holiday bubble.

He tries to keep Dan pushed to the back of his thoughts. He’s written and deleted a hundred texts, held his finger over Dan’s number in his contacts a hundred times only to chicken out and shove his phone back into his pocket or under his pillow. He tries to keep himself busy, even if it’s something as simple as going with his mum to the grocery store or helping her do the washing up. 

Even if it’s going out to the pub with Ian and some of the other blokes from school. He sits at the table with them in the dimly lit bar, offering as little to the conversation as possible and drinking too much beer. It tastes a little less like piss with each subsequent pint. He reckons a little low stakes self destruction is long overdue, and there are worse things to contend with than a hangover. 

These reunions get a little more strange every year. He’s known these people since they were tiny children. They’re all adults now, sat here discussing their jobs and relationships and other distressingly grown up things. 

He’s about to order a fifth pint - or maybe it’s the sixth? - when Ian announces to the group that it’s past his bedtime. Instead of arguing, the other guys agree, and they all finish their drinks before heading their separate ways. 

Once outside, Phil pulls out his phone to call a car but Ian grabs it from his hand and says, “We’re walking.”

“It’s freezing,” Phil protests.

“The booze’ll keep you warm.” He hands Phil’s phone back. “C’mon, it’ll give us time to talk.”

“That sounds awful,” Phil says, but he slides his phone back inside his pocket. He doesn’t feel as drunk as he reckons he should - not enough not to feel December’s chill, and definitely not enough to feel like he wants to have a heart to heart.

“What’s up with you?” Ian asks bluntly as he starts to walk.

Phil follows reluctantly. “What? I’m f—”

“Nope.”

Phil huffs. “Well… let me pretend, then.”

“Is it about what’s-his-name? Soulmate dude?”

“Dan,” Phil says quietly.

“Right, Dan.” Ian shivers and pulls his hood up over his head. “Did you ask him if he fancies cock?”

“Not that I ever would have actually done that, but no. Didn’t really need to, in the end.”

Ian’s eyes go buggy. “Fuck’s sake, Phil, what happened?”

Phil looks down at the pavement. “He kissed me.”

“He kissed you?”

“We kissed,” Phil amends.

“But he kissed you first.”

“Yeah.”

“So why are you still being a wanker?”

Phil glares at him. “I can see why Lauren hated you.”

“Oi, come on. I’m taking the piss, mate.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Well… yeah, that too,” Ian admits. “I just wanna know what happened. It’s weird to see you so down.”

“I like him,” Phil blurts. “I like him a lot.”

“I’m failing to see an actual problem, here.”

“I’m the problem,” Phil says, a touch of proper anger starting to work itself up in his chest. “I’m always the problem.”

“With that attitude, yeah, you are.”

Phil had been expecting words of comfort, so Ian’s response is jarring enough that he actually stops walking. “What?”

“I’m sorry but like… fuck, Phil. You need to pull your head out of your ass a bit.”

He’s genuinely got no other response but to repeat, “What?”

“Ever since you moved to London you’ve been kind of a dickhead, mate. And since you met Dan you’re bloody insufferable.”

He just stands there in the cold, rooted to the spot. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that?” There’s not as much heat in his voice as he’d intended.

“I dunno.” Ian looks down and kicks at a crack in the pavement. “Sorry.”

“I was just venting,” Phil says quietly. “I thought you were allowed to do that with mates.”

“You are,” Ian says. “But sometimes I wanna vent too. And you act like my life is perfect. You act like you’re the only one in the world with problems. And honestly, most of your problems are just you feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I ask about Lauren and Emily all the time,” Phil says weakly.

Ian shrugs. “Feels like you just want more to compare yourself to so you can justify your whole ‘poor me’ thing.”

“I don’t.” There’s a lump forming in Phil’s throat. “I like hearing about your life.”

“But you’re romanticizing it.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil says. “I didn’t mean to.” He really doesn’t want to cry, but all the beer coursing through his blood is making his stupid eyes leaky. 

Suddenly Ian is stepping into Phil’s space and pulling him into a hug. “Sorry, mate. That was harsh. You’re right, I’m drunk.”

“I don’t want to be a dickhead,” Phil says miserably.

Ian laughs. “You’re not.”

“I am. You said.”

“You’re…” He struggles for the right word, but it just makes it more obvious to Phil that he meant what he said and now he’s backtracking because he’s a nice guy.

“What do I do?” Phil asks. “I don’t wanna be insufferable.”

Ian pulls away and gives Phil a little punch in the shoulder, probably a bit of a no homo thing, but Phil won’t hold it against him. “Stop moaning about Dan, for one,” Ian says.

“He keeps coming and going,” Phil says. “I don’t know what his deal is. Sometimes I think he likes me back and then he runs away.”

“Phil, don’t be daft. He kissed you, he likes you.”

“Then why is he running?”

“Because it’s fucking scary.”

Phil frowns. “What is?”

“Bonding. Being told that this is the person you’re meant to spend forever with, before you even know who they are. It’s like… it can fuck with your head at first.”

“Did it fuck with your head?” Phil asks. He feels stupid for having to ask. He feels stupid for having to be lectured by his best friend about things that probably should have been obvious.

“Yeah. Big time.”

“You never told me.”

Ian shrugs. “It’s just the way, innit? You’re meant to be happy when you find the one.”

“I thought people _were_ happy when they found the one,” Phil says. “It thought it took out all the scary parts of meeting someone new.”

“It also takes away choice.”

Phil feels sick. “I never thought of it like that.”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you.”

He’s afraid of the answer, but he has to ask, “Are you happy now? With Lauren?”

“Yeah, man. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But it took us a fuckload of time to get there.”

Phil shakes his head. “I really am a dickhead.”

Ian reaches up and pats his shoulder. “A lovable one, though.”

“What if… what if Dan doesn’t want to put in a fuckload of time?” Phil asks weakly. 

“I can’t answer that,” Ian says. “I wish I could. All I can say is that you don’t actually need some dude to be happy. You can’t rely on that, you have to make it for yourself.”

“What if I can’t?”

Ian squeezes where his hand still rests on Phil’s shoulder, giving Phil a bit of a shake. “You _can_.”

“Everyone I know who’s bonded seems so happy,” Phil says. “I mean, look at my parents. I saw my dad grab my mum’s butt this morning.”

Ian makes a face. 

“I know. It’s disgusting how much they still fancy each other.”

“I guess I can’t blame you for thinking the way you do,” Ian says. “You’ve been conditioned.”

Phil nods. “And Mar and Corn don’t help.” He pauses. “Although I guess maybe their story could be something like yours and I wouldn’t even know.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

Phil shivers. “I’m freezing.”

“Me too, this idea was mental. Let’s get a car.”

They share a taxi to Ian’s place and Phil lives close enough to walk from there. He’s cold and tired, but he actually relishes the time to himself. He’s got a lot to digest. 

His hand is wrapped around the phone inside his pocket. It feels heavy as a brick. He’s been holding on to hope that Dan would reach out, but now, with Ian’s words still echoing in his head, he’s really not sure of anything. 

He pulls the phone out and looks at the screen. No calls, no texts. No evidence that Dan is thinking about him. By now it’s early morning, and just a few days before Christmas. Is Dan lying in his childhood bedroom awake and miserable? Or maybe he’s relieved. Maybe the physical separation came at exactly the right time.

Maybe Phil was more affected by the beers than he’d thought, because suddenly he can’t stop himself swiping open his phone and typing out his simple truth in that moment: _i hope i get to see you again some day._

He pockets his phone, walks home and goes to bed.

-

He sleeps like a rock. If he has dreams that night, he doesn’t remember them when he wakes. His head hurts, but he’s not actively sick, maybe because when he looks at his phone he sees that he’s slept well past midday. 

Dan hasn’t replied. Phil leaves his phone in his room and goes to shower the lingering smell of pub off of him. He makes the water hot, so hot that it burns his skin a little at first. It’s a nice kind of pain. He lets it hit his shoulders and run down his back for ages before he even thinks of reaching for the body wash. When he does, he lets his hands wander, focusing on certain places in particular, and that’s nice too. It’s a few minutes where his mind is free from this gnawing sense of loss. 

When goes downstairs to the kitchen, he’s greeted by his mum and no one else. He is informed that Martyn and Cornelia have gone out to meet up with some of his old mates from college and his dad is having a nap.

His mum, of course, is cooking; the whole house smells like cinnamon and sugar. He asks if she needs help but she waves off his offer and sits him at the table with a big steaming mug. He takes a sip and smiles at the simplicity of coffee that came from powder in a tin. A year of serving the fancy stuff hasn’t seemed to turn him into any kind of caffeine connoisseur, because he likes this just as much. 

He watches his mum moving around the kitchen and putting ingredients together like it’s some kind of dance. He’d never really noticed before, and he would have never guessed that cooking could be graceful, but the way she does it, it is. He wonders if she was like this before she met his dad. How much had the power of bonding contributed to her mastery of all things food-related?

“Mum, why are you not a fancy chef running your own posh restaurant by now?”

She laughs. “That sounds awful.”

“Really? Why?”

She plucks a biscuit from where it’s cooling on a wire rack and hands it to him. It’s gingerbread, not even iced or decorated yet and already stupidly delicious. “I’d have had to be away from home,” she says simply. “I would’ve missed so much of you and your brother growing up.”

He tilts his head and studies her as he eats. “But you’re so good at cooking.”

“I like cooking for people I love. Cooking for strangers doesn’t interest me.”

“Do you wish you got a different power?” He dips a bit of biscuit in his coffee. “Something that wasn’t so much like work?”

She laughs, but she doesn’t answer. He thinks nothing of it, and continues nibbling at his cookie as slowly as he can. He knows she won’t give him another one until they’re decorated and he wants to make it last.

As he sits there watching her in an absentminded kind of way, last night’s conversation with Ian starts to return to him. “Mum, can I ask you something?”

“Reckon so.”

“Was it weird when you and dad bonded?”

“Hm?” She doesn’t turn around to look at him, so he can’t tell if there’s something off or if it’s just in his head.

“Ian said he and Lauren didn’t even like each other at first. Was it like that for you?”

She stands at the counter with her back to him, seconds ticking by in complete silence. A strange feeling of dread starts to knot itself up in Phil’s chest and then finally she turns around.

“Quite a question, that is.”

His stomach feels like lead. “Why?”

She turns around smiles at him sadly. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me a bit off guard today, love.”

“You’re freaking me out.”

She wipes her hands on her trousers - something she never does - and sits in the seat next to him. She turns her body to face his and looks him right in the eyes. “Phil, you’re an adult now.”

Suddenly his hangover catches up with him and his stomach threatens to mutiny. “Mum, what the hell.”

“Love.” She reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Your father and I aren’t bonded.”

The world around him seems to lose focus after that, like looking through the lens of a broken camera or the haze of a dream. He stares at her blankly. “What? Yes you are.”

She shakes her head. “No, love.” She’s looking at him like he’s about to break, which honestly - he is, but he still doesn’t appreciate it. He’s at an utter loss. 

“Why didn’t…” He stares at the maddeningly pitying expression on her face. “You always told us you were. It’s not like I made this up.”

“We told everyone we were,” she says. “Right from the beginning. Back then it was just… it was a different time. Marrying someone who wasn’t your soulmate was… taboo, to say the least. It felt like a small lie at the time.”

“What… how can you call that small?”

She pulls her hand back. “We knew we wanted to be together. It didn’t feel like anyone else’s business.”

Phil can barely hear her over the pounding of his own heart. It shouldn’t matter. He knows that. He shouldn’t be taking it so bloody personally. It doesn’t actually change anything.

Except that really, it changes everything. 

“You could have told me,” Phil says in a small voice. “I mean you told me about santa when I was eight.”

“You’re right, love, and I’m sorry. We should have told you sooner. It seemed needless to upset you.”

Phil barks a laugh so bitter it burns in his throat. “Right.”

“We didn’t mean to hurt you, sweetheart.”

Phil forces himself to take a breath in and compose himself. He shakes his head. “I just… it’s so weird. It’s so weird. My whole life I thought…”

“It doesn’t change anything, Phil. We’re still your parents. We still love you and we love each other. Very much.”

He looks down at his coffee, suddenly embarrassed. He’s acting like a proper child. “I know.”

“Is something going on?” she asks. “You’re taking this so personally.”

“You’re my parents. It _is_ personal.”

She ignores what he says completely, reaching over and running her fingers through his hair still damp from the shower. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready, then.”

“What if you meet your soulmate?” he blurts. The idea that she could leave her dad pains him to his very core.

Again, she’s quiet, clearly not wanting to answer the question.

“Mum,” he says pleadingly.

“I think this all might be a bit much for you, love.”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

She pulls her hand back and sighs quietly. “Well, if you must know, I have already.”

Phil’s heart stops. “What? When?”

“Oh, years ago, when I was still young. You were just a boy.”

“What?”

“It was during the day. You and your brother were at school and I was at Tesco.”

“You met your soulmate at Tesco?”

She laughs a little. “Fitting for me, innit?”

“What happened?” Phil demands. 

“Nothing happened. He tried to chat me up and I told him I was married and that was that. Never saw the bloke again.”

“Mum, are you fucking serious.”

“Phil,” she scolds. “Language.”

“I’m sorry, but… are you serious? You just blew him off?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You’d have preferred if I entertained the idea?”

“No, of course not, I just…” He scrubs a hand down over his face. “What’s the point? What is the point of any of it, if you can just ignore it and live your life like it never happened?”

“I don’t think I can answer that for you, Phil.”

“You’re the mum,” he says pathetically. “You’re supposed to know everything.”

She laughs. “You’ll see someday, when you have kids of your own.”

He bites back all the reasons he’s sure he’ll never even have the _option_ of giving her grandchildren and instead asks, “Does dad know?”

She nods. “I can tell you that was _not_ a good day for us.”

“Was he upset?”

She nods again. “We both were. But we got through it.”

“How?” he asks, with such intensity that her eyebrows lift up in question. 

He can’t tell her. He just can’t. 

“We talked,” she says. “That’s how you get through anything, isn’t it? Talking to each other. Listening to each other. Being honest.”

“Honest,” Phil echoes.

She puts her hand under his chin. “You need to be honest, Phil.”

He balks. “Me? We’re talking about you.”

“I may not have all the answers, but I do know some things, young man. I can tell when something's going on with you.”

He opens his mouth to protest, then closes it again. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Are you very upset with me?” she asks.

He thinks about it for a moment. “Does Martyn know?”

It takes her so long to answer that he knows what she’s going to say before she manages to find the words.

“Wow, mum. Thanks.”

“He had questions when he met Cornelia.”

“It’s been _that_ long?”

She looks at him helplessly. He looks away and says, “I think I’m very upset with you.”

-

Phil’s never been miserable at Christmas before. Historically it’s been his favourite time of year. 

This year, he can barely look at anyone. He can’t bear to see his family’s smiles while knowing they kept this secret for years. They lied to him for _years_.

He spends as much time as he can get away with in his room, listening to Dan’s playlist and trying to come to terms with the fact that, in no small way, his entire perception of love has been a lie from the very start. Bonding means nothing. That much is clear to him now. 

He cringes to think he’d pressured Dan to play along with something he hadn’t really wanted, and it was all based on nothing but bullshit. It was all based on a weird, momentary physical reaction that some confused person a long time ago had decided must happen for a reason. He nearly makes himself sick thinking of the relationships and opportunities he let pass him by because of his faith that he was holding out for certainty. He thinks of Jimmy, and it hurts more now than it had then. He feels stupid. He feels betrayed. Certainty doesn’t exist.

He goes to bed after dinner on Christmas eve claiming a migraine. Everyone knows he’s lying, but no one says anything because they’ve all noticed that he’s been sullen and withdrawn for days. No one has asked him about it, but Phil has to assume Kath told them. 

His suspicions are confirmed when Cornelia comes in and sits at the end of his bed. 

“Do you want to talk?”

He shakes his head. She scoots a little closer to him. “They should have told you a lot sooner.”

That catches him off guard. He could cry right now if he let himself. He clears his throat gruffly, because he really doesn’t want to do that. “Thank you.”

“I was thinking about going for a walk,” she says. “Do you wanna come?”

He pulls his knees up to his chest and hugs them. “Is Martyn going?”

“No, he fell asleep on the sofa.”

When Phil doesn’t answer, she adds, “It’s snowing.”

If he still believed in signs from the universe, snow on Christmas eve would feel pretty freaking magical. The flakes drifting lazily to the ground are fat and fluffy, and they stick to the pavement without melting. Cornelia tips her head back and sticks her tongue out, and Phil isn’t quite dead enough inside not to smile at the sight.

“Are they ripe enough?” he jokes.

“You try,” she insists, so he tips his face to the sky and opens his mouth. 

It takes ages for a flake to land on his tongue. They decorate his nose and cheeks and forehead first. When he finally gets one, it melts instantly. He looks over at her. “Needs sugar.”

Her laugh is soft and twinkly, and it does something to him. She’s here for him. She always has been, ever since she came into Martyn’s life. She didn’t have to do that. Martyn would have loved her anyway.

But she did. She took an interest in being a friend to Phil, and even though he’s currently miserable, he knows his life is infinitely better for having her in it. He can’t separate that from the fact that she likely wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t bonded with his brother. 

Being angry is easy. It’s the confusion that’s harder. It’s that fucking uncertainty. 

“What am I gonna do, Corn?”

She reaches a gloved hand out and hooks it around Phil’s arm. “I don’t know. Hopefully whatever you need to do to be at peace.”

He nods, tilting his face up to meet the falling snow again. He’s glad he came out. It does feel magical.

Later, when they’ve returned to the house and it’s warm and dark, when he’s kicked off his wet trainers and crawled shivering under his blue and green duvet, he closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He tries, but now that everything is quiet and still, all that exists behind his eyelids is Dan. His smile, his curls, his headphones. His lips.

Then there’s a buzzing beneath his head. It’s such a bizarre time to be receiving a call that curiosity has him reaching his hand under his pillow to answer the phone.

Phil’s heart is hammering as he answers. “Dan?”

“Hey.”

“Hi…” He isn’t even bothering trying to disguise his bewilderment. 

“Did I wake you?” Dan asks.

“No.”

“Santa won’t come if you don’t go to sleep. That’s what my mum used to say when I was little.”

“Santa can’t bring me what I want,” Phil says quietly.

“Yeah. Reckon not anymore, eh?”

Phil’s chest is aching with all the things he should and doesn’t want to say, all the questions he should and doesn’t want to ask. “How’s Christmas in the south?” he asks instead. It’s the twenty-fifth. He can pretend just for today that a little bit of heartbreak isn’t on the way. 

“Pretty shit,” Dan says. Again his voice is a deep sleepy sound that Phil wants to swallow whole. He feels it in the pit of his stomach like there was no space between them at all. “You?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Phil confirms. “Worst Christmas ever.”

“Shit, man, what happened?”

Phil takes his time answering. “I guess I finally had to grow up.”

“I was so happy before I grew up,” Dan says. “It’s weird how being back here reminds me of both the best times and the worst times.”

“Where are you?” Phil asks, just for the sole purpose of keeping Dan talking. He doesn’t know how to ask about Dan’s worst times, and he’s pretty sure Dan wouldn’t tell him anyway. 

“In my room. In bed.”

“Me too.” There’s a beat or two of silence, but it doesn’t feel bad. It doesn’t feel like Dan is waiting for Phil to entertain him or say something clever. It sort of feels like he could just be himself and that would be alright. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Dan says. “It’s been ages since I slept.”

“You sound tired.”

Dan laughs, breathy and soft as he always seems to do in the quiet hours when the sun is hiding and Phil’s the one making him do it. “I am,” he says. “You can’t imagine how tired I am.” He sounds like he’s talking about more than missing sleep.

“I think I can, actually,” Phil says.

Dan seems to think about that for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Neither of them say anything for a long time after that. Phil closes his eyes and listens to Dan’s quiet breathing, and eventually he slips into a state between wakefulness and sleep. He wishes they never had to hang up.

“Are you asleep?” Dan whispers.

“I’m not sure,” Phil whispers back. “If I am, I don’t wanna wake up.”

Dan’s breath is so close in his ear that Phil swears he can feel the warmth of it. “Let’s stay asleep,” Dan says.

Phil smiles, his whole body warm and heavy, his thoughts coming so slow he can’t quite make sense of them. In this moment he wants to believe that souls are real and that Dan’s is meant for him. He almost does, stoned as he is on clinging hope and whispered words. “Sleep,” he echoes, and it’s the last memory he has before he does exactly that. 

-

He takes a train back to London on the twenty-seventh. He’d have gone sooner if he thought it wouldn’t have broken his mum’s heart, but as it was she still had a tear in her eye when she’d hugged him goodbye at Manchester Piccadilly. 

“You’ll come back for your birthday, won’t you?”

He hadn’t had the heart to say no. He can’t really see himself being less upset a month from now, but he’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it.

His flat feels uncharacteristically cold and empty when he opens the door and steps inside. It’s full of his things, but it doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t feel like the same person who bought the lava lamp on the coffee table and painted the walls in the lounge blue. He toes off his shoes and throws his coat over the back of the sofa before he collapses down into the well worn cushions. 

He doesn’t want to think, so he turns on the tv. That’s about all he can think to do, watch moving pictures on a screen and let his tired brain go numb.

He’s not sure how long he sleeps, but judging from the ache in his neck, it was a while. Something is vibrating against his leg, and by the time he’s lucid enough to understand that it’s his phone ringing, he’s missed the call.

He doesn’t even have the capacity for a nervous physical reaction at the sight of Dan’s name. He just holds his phone in his hand and stares down at the screen until the light goes off. He taps the glass and stares some more. It goes dark. He taps. He keeps repeating those two steps over and over until he gets annoyed by his own uselessness and swipes on the notification to ring Dan back.

He answers on the first ring. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“What are you up to?”

“Nothing. Fell asleep on my sofa watching Bake Off reruns.”

“ _Your_ sofa?” Dan asks.

“Yeah.”

“You’re home? In London?”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “I… It was a weird trip. I wanted to not be there anymore.”

“Wanna come ‘round mine?”

That works to shake Phil out of his own head. “What?”

“I’m home too.”

“Oh.”

“And… I reckon we should talk.”

Phil almost laughs, but he catches himself. “Yeah, reckon we should.”

-

From the moment he leaves his own flat to the moment he gets to Dan’s, he’s thinking about what he’ll say when they’re face to face again, but whatever it was he’d settled on as an opening line completely flies off into the ether as soon as the door opens and he sees those big brown eyes. His brain is empty of everything sane and rational because all he wants to do is put his hands on Dan’s body and forget about all the bullshit.

“Phil.”

“Hi.”

Dan pulls him inside and shuts the door behind them. His hand is still fisted in the front of Phil’s coat when he says, “I missed you.”

Just like that. _I missed you_. 

And then Dan kisses him. Just once, lightly and close-mouthed before pulling his face back to see Phil’s reaction.

Phil’s doesn’t even really have one. Mostly he just wants Dan to do it again. So he says, “Do that again.”

Dan leans in slowly and Phil meets him this time. This kiss lasts a little longer than the first and makes a noise when they pull apart that has Phil shivering with the intimacy of it. 

“What are we doing?” he whispers.

Dan lets go of Phil’s coat, but only so he can pull the zipper down and then push it off Phil’s shoulders. It falls to the ground with a soft thud. “I think we’re kissing,” Dan says. He leans his face in so close that his nose brushes up along the side of Phil’s.

Phil closes his eyes. “Are you going to run away again?”

Dan laughs, the breathy one Phil’s come to think of as just for him. “We’re in my flat. I’m not going anywhere.”

Phil knows they have to talk. He knows there are about a hundred reasons he shouldn’t tilt his head into another kiss, but he does it anyway. He’s a sad, weak little man who can’t resist the things he wants when they’re right in front of him.

Whether or not it’s the last kiss they ever share, he knows this is one he’ll never forget. It’s soft and slow and warm and so intense it makes Phil’s chest feel tight. He reaches up to fit his palm around the curve of Dan’s jaw, feeling the muscles there work as their lips part against each other's to take things deeper. Phil’s tongue brushes Dan’s and Dan’s hand slips up the back of Phil’s jumper. 

Dan’s fingers are warm on Phil’s skin, his touch so tender and careful Phil feels like he’s melting right into it. It doesn’t feel like the attention of a man who isn’t exactly where he wants to be. 

But then again, the good moments with Dan have never felt like that. They’ve all been just that: good. Disarmingly good, and it’s when the armour comes off that the winds of Dan’s heart seem to shift suddenly, leaving Phil naked and alone.

It pains him to do it, but he pushes lightly against Dan’s chest until their faces come apart. Dan’s still got a hand pressed to the bare skin of Phil’s lower back, and now an expression of confusion as Phil takes a step back. 

“We really need to talk,” Phil says.

The confusion melts into resignation. “Yeah.”

They sit on opposite ends of the sofa. Phil stares straight ahead, at the light grey paint on Dan’s walls. “What are we doing?” he asks again.

This time Dan says, “I really don’t know.”

In spite of all he’s been telling himself, all he’s been bracing for, Dan’s words cut deep. Phil’s next breath in is ragged. He can’t bear to turn his head and see if Dan’s noticed.

“For what it’s worth,” Dan says, “I’m trying.”

Phil can’t not look at him now. “Why?” he asks in a shaky voice. “Why do you have to try so hard? What’s so wrong with me?”

“Nothing, Phil, fuck. That’s not—”

“You don’t have to try,” Phil blurts. “We don’t have to do this.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then: “Fuck that.”

Phil starts to cry. It’s all too much. Too much confusion, too much uncertainty, too many little promises made to him over the course of his life by white lies and half truths. He doesn’t know how to untangle them enough to be mature in this moment. It feels like losing everything.

Dan scoots a little closer. “Shit, Phil. I’m—”

“My parents aren’t bonded,” Phil interrupts again, heaving a deep breath in to force some composure. He wipes his eyes on his sleeve and clears his throat and tries to channel anger in place of helplessness. 

“What?”

“My mum told me over the holiday,” Phil says. “I spent my whole life thinking they were soulmates and it turns out they aren’t.”

“Wait, like— they _told_ you they were?”

Phil nods.

“That’s fucked up.”

“Apparently it was just, like… not really a thing, to marry someone you weren’t bonded to. My mum said they lied right from the start because it was nobody else’s business but theirs.”

“Wow.”

“She said she met her actual soulmate at fucking Tesco when I was a kid and just… wasn’t bothered. Told the bloke she was already married and just went on with her life.” 

“This probably isn’t the right thing to say, but… your mum’s kind of a badass, mate. I hope I get to meet her someday.”

Phil hugs his knees to his chest. He feels too exposed, like all his nerves are frayed and bared to forces completely outside of his control. “Will you even be around that long?”

Dan’s answer surprises him. “If you don’t give up on me before then.”

“Me?” Phil asks. “Give up?” The words make no sense to him.

“Yeah.”

“I—” He pushes his glasses up onto his forehead to dig the heels of his palms into his closed eyes. “Did you even hear what I said?”

Dan doesn’t respond beyond maintaining eye contact after Phil’s fixed his glasses back into place. It’s slightly infuriating, his stoicism. It just makes Phil feel even more unhinged.

“You were right,” he says rather aggressively. “Bonding is bullshit. Soulmates aren’t real. It all means nothing.”

“I know.”

Phil reckons he’s about to have a full on freak out when Dan adds, “I fell for you anyway.”

All Phil’s indignation deflates instantly. “You… what?”

Dan laughs.

Phil says, “No you didn’t.”

“Oh, didn’t I? My mistake then. I figured missing you when you’re not around and wanting to kiss you and thinking about you when I touch myself and being fascinated by every thought you share with me were signs I was into you.”

Phil hides his face between his knees, heart going absolutely batshit with the pounding. “Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s going to hurt even more when you go away.”

Silence, and then, “So you fell for me too.”

Phil looks up, one traitorous tear rolling down his cheek and a frown deep set between his brows. “Of course I did. You must have known that already.”

“What I mean is… you still feel it?” Dan asks. “Even though you now think bonding is bullshit? It wasn’t just that you thought we were meant for each other?”

Phil thinks about it, really _thinks_. It feels like the truth when he says, “I’m not sure it was ever really about that.”

“But you don’t know.”

Phil squeezes around his knees tighter. “It’s… It’s all a mess,” he says. “My head is all fucked up and I don’t know anything for sure anymore. 

“Do you want me?” Dan asks bluntly. “Do you know that much at least?”

All Phil can do is nod. “I do. But maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because. Because you’ll never trust that my feelings are real. And I’ll never trust that you won’t just run away.”

“I don’t run away because I don’t want you, Phil. It’s actually the complete fucking opposite.”

Phil looks up and into Dan’s eyes and waits for him to say something that makes sense. When he doesn’t, Phil asks, “Why, then?”

Dan reaches up and runs his fingers through his hair, stopping at the top of his head to grip a fistful of curls and tug in a show of some kind of negative emotion.

“Is it your deep dark secrets?” Phil asks quietly. “Your trauma?”

Dan nods.

Phil lets go of his legs. He doesn’t want his posture to indicate a barrier between them in this moment. He wants Dan to know he’s open to anything he has to say. “You can trust me with them. I promise.”

Their eyes lock. 

“I’m gay.”

Phil represses the instinctual urge to downplay its obviousness. He scoots a little closer to Dan and reaches out to give his hand a little squeeze. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. Clearly this means something to Dan, something more than the actual words. He squeezes Dan’s hand and waits.

“I’ve never said that out loud before,” Dan admits. “It’s scary as fuck.”

“It is,” Phil says gently. “But it’s okay.”

Dan pulls his hand from Phil’s and reaches up for his hair again, this time pushing the waves away from his temple. Phil leans in and that’s when he sees it, a long, silvery line of scar tissue running alongside the hairline. His stomach drops before Dan’s even said a single word.

“Never actually had to say it for people to hate me for it.”

Phil reaches up and runs the pad of his finger against the obviously long-healed gash. He’s never had to work so hard to hold back tears, and he’s not sure how long he can keep it up. “What happened?” he whispers. 

“Toxic masculinity,” Dan says. “A school full of angry boys taking their shit out on an easy target.”

Phil’s voice breaks when he whispers his empty apology.

“The first time I heard the word gay was when a boy at school shouted it in my face before pushing me to the ground. I was five years old.”

Phil shakes his head and looks away, like he can stop himself picturing it if he tries hard enough. “That’s why you keep running.”

“Bonding with a bloke felt like a slap in the face,” Dan continues. “I was never going to be allowed to escape this thing that people hate me for so much.” 

Phil bites down harshly into his lip. He won’t cry. These tears don’t belong to him right now.

Dan continues, “It’s fucked up that I keep running. I know that. I hate myself for it every time.”

“But you keep coming back.” 

“I do.”

“Why?” Phil asks. “You don’t even believe in soulmates.”

“I tried not to, believe me. I wanted to pretend it never happened, but I couldn’t get your face out of my head.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dan gives him a quizzically amused look. “You’re apologizing for having a nice face?”

“For being another thing you have to endure.”

Suddenly Dan is up and climbing right into Phil’s lap, gripping his face on either side of his head and kissing him hard. Phil is only stunned for a moment before a wash of heat and hormones overtake his every impulse and he’s grabbing Dan’s hips and kissing back. He licks into Dan’s mouth and bites at his lips and groans in the back of his throat when Dan accidentally grinds down where they’ve both quickly grown hard.

Phil forgets himself totally. He forgets everything they’ve just talked about, every doubt and fear he’s felt in the past month and lets himself give in. Dan is moving against him in a way that isn’t accidental anymore and his blood is on fire. He hadn’t actually known that was possible but now he does because one of Dan’s hands is pressed right against Phil’s cock, with only a couple pesky layers of clothing in between. 

“I love this,” Dan says in a voice so husky and enticing Phil reckons it should be illegal. “I’m not enduring anything.”

Phil nods, reaching down to take Dan’s hand and guide it inside his jeans. Then Dan’s the one groaning, and Phil feels it all in his stomach, a visceral swoop the likes of which he didn’t even know his body capable.

Dan pops the button on Phil’s jeans open and pulls the zipper down almost in one fluid motion. The man has such lovely clever fingers and he’s using them to touch Phil’s dick. That’s when kissing becomes too difficult for Phil’s mouth to accomplish, so he moves it down to Dan’s neck. Almost the instant his lips touch Dan’s skin Dan gasps and jerks back.

They stare at each other, lips bitten red and eyes wide with shock.

“Uh. Sorry,” Phil says.

Dan’s hand drifts up to touch the spot where Phil’s mouth had just been. “Yeah…” He sounds as dazed as he looks.

“Do you want me to run so you don’t have to?” Phil asks, trying to get his fly done back up with shaking fingers.

“No,” Dan says quickly, seemingly snapped back to reality by Phil’s words. “No more fucking running. You just surprised me. My neck is… sensitive.”

Phil decides to follow the path of courage instead of the usual retreat into inaction. He leans forward and very slowly presses a kiss to the long line of Dan’s neck. He can actually feel the tension in Dan’s body relax.

“I like you,” Dan says simply.

“Even though we’re soulmates?”

Dan shrugs. “Maybe the universe actually gets it right every once in a while.”

Phil bites his lip. He’s got no idea how to respond to any of this. His boner isn’t even fully gone yet.

Dan starts to say, “Do you not—” but Phil claps his hand over Dan’s mouth before he can finish his sentence. “Shut up.”

“Mmkay,” Dan mumbles against Phil’s palm.

“Do you mean it?” Phil asks. “No more running?” He drops his hand so Dan can answer.

“Yeah. I’m tired of hating myself.”

Phil stares at Dan’s face, and Dan stares back. It’s such a uniquely bizarre situation they find themselves in. A difficult one, to be sure, and Phil can’t be sure what move he’s meant to make next. But they’re both here now, and having Dan on top of him and baring all these painful truths makes Phil feel like they might actually be able to give this thing a go. 

“Remember I told you about my mate, Ian?”

Dan nods.

“He told me I need to grow up and take responsibility for myself.”

“Wow,” Dan says. “Harsh.”

“It was, but he was also right. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Anyway, I reckon that means I should tell you that… I like you so much, Dan, and I really don’t think it has anything to do with the bond.” His whole body is vibrating with fear at the depth of vulnerability he’s offering up, but he takes a breath and carries on. “I think you’re amazing. I don’t want you to hate yourself.”

Dan seems momentarily overwhelmed, and Phil doesn’t blame him. It’s a lot they’re putting on each other, and whether they like it or not, the bond colours everything.

But when he responds, he says in a soft voice, “Something about you kind of makes me feel like someday I could get to a place where I don’t.”

Phil buries his face in his hands, cheeks burning, mouth turned up in a smile that feels too exposing of sudden emotion to reveal. 

“What?” Dan asks.

Phil shakes his head, and Dan tugs at his hands until Phil relents. He looks up at Dan’s face completely unshielded. “I thought I was gonna come here and let you off the hook. I was an emo git about it the whole time I was up north.”

“I didn’t go longer than five minutes the whole holiday without thinking about that kiss,” Dan says. 

“Me neither.” Phil reaches up and collects a handful of the front of Dan’s jumper to pull his face down closer. “You really fucked me up with that one, mate.”

Dan’s halfway through one of his breathy laughs when Phil cuts him off with his lips. Dan kisses back like they’ve been doing this for ages, and it only takes a minute before Phil finds himself shifting under Dan’s weight again. 

Dan pulls away just enough to mumble, “What?” against Phil’s mouth.

“We have to stop,” Phil forces himself to say.

“Why?”

“Because otherwise I’ll be forced to have sex with you right here and now.”

Dan slides a hand down into Phil’s pants again, curling his fingers around Phil’s half hard shape. “I fail to see the problem.”

Phil bites Dan’s lip and pulls at it a bit. He really can’t help himself. But he still has just enough non hormone-addled brain cells left to say, “Don’t wanna scare you off again.”

Dan’s answer comes in the form of a reciprocating lip bite and his free hand reaching down to open his own jeans, and Phil decides for once in his life not to overthink. 

There’s no guarantee. There is absolutely no certainty. He could be setting himself up for the most devastating heartbreak of his life.

But he’s decided he’s going to do it anyway. 

-

It’s not a surprise when Martyn rings a few days later. He wants to meet Phil somewhere they can talk. It makes Phil’s stomach squirm with the nerves, but he’s been expecting this. 

“Let’s meet at the shop,” Phil suggests.

Martyn says, “Oh. But—”

“In an hour,” Phil insists. No sense pulling the plaster off slowly. “See you then.”

He hangs up, shoves his phone under his pillow and rolls over into the solid warm chest of the man lying next to him. Dan groans contentedly and drapes a long arm over Phil’s shoulder.

Phil nuzzles in and kisses Dan’s neck, delighting in the way Dan tilts his head to invite more, but instead Phil pops up to plant his lips on Dan’s mouth instead. Dan kisses back and rolls himself on top of Phil’s chest. “You’re such a tease.”

Phil laughs and slides his hands up Dan’s back as Dan kisses him, and it’s all so disgustingly hot and new and wonderful that Phil can barely contain all the happiness popping off inside of him. 

He has to, though, at least for a little while. He presses kisses along Dan’s jaw and murmurs, “I have to go.”

“What? Fuck that, no you don’t.”

“Just for a bit.” He gives Dan’s chin a playful nibble. “Gotta go see Mar real quick.”

Dan pouts. “I wanna stay here.”

“So stay,” Phil says, tearing himself away and scooting to the edge of the bed. “Stay right here and wait for me. I won't be long.”

Dan stretches his arms up and rolls onto his back, then tucks his hands behind his head. “Promise?”

Phil gets up and turns around so he can admire the view for a moment. “You literally couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

“Definitely not gonna try.”

Phil shakes his head. “We’re gross.”

“Mm, yeah.” Dan stretches again, looking long and cozy and _right_ all tangled up in Phil’s bedsheets. “I love it.”

Phil loves it too, enough that it makes his chest ache a little at the thought of not having it some day. He hates that his brain would ever make him think that way, that in the back of his mind he’s already preparing for the worst case scenario. So instead of letting the thought fester, he decides to just be honest. “This isn’t ‘a too good to be true’ thing, is it? You’ll still be here when I get back?”

“If it was too good to be true, you wouldn’t have to ask me that.”

“Tell me you’ll be here.”

Dan smiles the warm, settled smile of a man who’s finally at peace. “I’ll be here, Phil. You can’t get rid of me now.”

-

Phil gets to the shop before Martyn. He looks around at the multicoloured furniture and weird art and the feeling he gets knowing his days here are numbered is a bittersweet one. 

It’s awkward from the start. Phil’s sat atop the counter with legs dangling over the edge, and he finds himself endlessly grateful that Cornelia hadn’t kept a good poker face. He feels like he’s the one with the upper hand here, despite the fact that he’s the one who’s likely about to lose his job. 

Martyn is visibly uncomfortable, a look Phil rarely sees on his brother. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he won’t quite meet Phil’s eyes. 

So Phil takes pity on him and says bluntly, “Spit it out, mate.” 

Martyn huffs a surprised laugh. “What did Corn tell you?”

“Nothing,” Phil says truthfully. “And somehow still enough.”

Martyn nods.

“So, what? I’m fired?”

“What?” His head shoots up, a frown etching deep lines into his forehead. “No, of course not.”

“Oh.” Phil’s bravado deflates a bit. “Really? Then what?”

“Corn and me… we’re going on tour together.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

Martyn bites his lip. “Couple months.”

Phil waits for the jealousy to flood him, the indignance. He’s bracing for that sky-is-falling feeling, but mostly he’s just confused.

And happy. He’s as surprised by that as by Martyn’s actual announcement. “Hey, Mar, that’s freaking amazing.”

Martyn’s cheeks break out in a cautious smile, “Yeah?”

“That’s so cool. My brother’s going to be an actual rock star.”

The apprehension seems to come whooshing out of him in one go as he grins at Phil and then hops up onto the counter to sit next to him. “I dunno ‘bout that, but… yeah. We’re pretty fucking chuffed.”

“You have Corny to thank, don’t you?” Phil asks.

“Oh absolutely. She’s got connections I could only dream of.”

“You really are a lucky bastard, you know that?” Phil punches him lightly on the shoulder.

Martyn just beams and nods. “I know.”

“So what happens to me?”

“Oh. Right. Well… I reckon that’s kind of up to you.”

Phil frowns. “How so?” 

“We’re gonna be on tour a while. Just little club gigs mostly, nothing crazy. We’ll basically be living out of a van. But…” He seems hesitant.

“What?” Phil urges.

“We want to travel after that.”

“Where?”

“Like… everywhere,” Martyn says. “As many places as we can afford to go. We kind of just want to wander the earth for a little while, while we’re still young enough.”

Ever the little brother, Phil says, “You’re not that young.”

“That’s why we’ve gotta shit or get off the pot.”

Phil wrinkles his nose. “Ew. Anyway, I still don’t understand what’s happening with the shop.”

“I’m giving it to you, idiot.”

The words don’t land at first. “What?”

Martyn shrugs. “We’re gonna be too busy to deal with it, and besides that, I’m just… not really bothered? You know I pretty much stumbled into this place ass backwards. I don’t have any kind of passion for running a coffee shop.”

“I don’t either,” Phil blurts. He’s not even sure why. By all accounts he should be thanking his brother profusely. Being a barista and running your own shop are worlds apart, and a promotion like that is exactly the type of purpose he’s been searching for.

So it really doesn’t make sense that the idea of being here without Martyn and Cornelia is actually rather abhorrent to him.

“You don’t want it?” Martyn asks.

Phil is lost for words. “I… don’t know?” He hops down from the counter and walks over to stare out the window. “Can I think about?”

“Uh… yeah. Of course. I didn’t really expect—”

“It’s just a lot,” Phil says. “It’s a lot all at once.”

“Sure, yeah. Of course, mate.”

“I don’t know anything about running a shop.”

“You could learn.”

“I guess.” He turns around and leans back against the glass as he looks across the shop at Martyn still sat on the counter. “I kind of feel like… like if I’m gonna learn something, maybe it should be something I actually, you know… care about.”

Martyn is quiet for a moment that stretches out just past the point of comfort before he says, “You hate me a little bit right now, don’t you, Phil.”

Phil smiles sadly. “No, I don’t.”

“You were so miserable at Christmas.”

Phil nods. 

“Mum told you about…?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, mate.”

Phil shrugs. “We all have to stop believing in fairy tales eventually.”

Martyn surprises Phil by saying, “Nah, we don’t. I’d say mum and dad are proof of that.”

Phil opens his mouth to argue and then closes it again. He tilts his head a bit and smiles, because Martyn is right. He’s always bloody right. It’s infuriating. And comforting.

“Why did mum and dad tell us we’d get powers when we found our soulmates?”

Martyn laughs. “Maybe they thought we would. It’s not like they knew how it all worked.”

“It’s kind of messed up that they lied to us, don’t you think?” 

Phil watches his brother, his older, cooler, smarter brother struggle to come up with a response, and for some reason it’s like a lightbulb going off inside Phil’s brain. “I guess growing up doesn’t always mean really growing up.”

Martyn says, “Maybe it never does.”

Phil nods slowly, absentmindedly as he tries to quietly process the death of his own perception of adulthood. 

“I slept with Dan this morning,” he says. “And yesterday. And the day before.”

Martyn’s eyes nearly bug right out of his face. “No shit?”

Phil shrugs, though his smirk gives him away. “We’re dating, I guess.”

Martyn hops off the counter and steps forward to collect his little brother into a hug that Phil returns readily. 

In all his fantasies about finding his purpose and his person, he’d never seen it going quite like this. He doesn’t know if Dan will be his person forever, and purpose still looms large and heavy in the distance, but something soft and light sprinkles down from that cloud now that didn’t before - hope.

“Phil?” Martyn steps back a bit, keeping a grip on Phil’s shoulders.

“What?”

“You don’t want this place, do you.”

“I think…” He chews on his lip, but his uncertainty is fleeting. He knows he doesn’t want to keep spending time in a hand me down coffee shop, he just needs to be brave enough to say it. “I think you should sell it. Use the money to travel to Iceland or Morocco or New Zealand or wherever it is you two wanna go.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out.”

“You’re sure?” Martyn asks. “You really wanna give this place up?”

Phil thinks about it for a while, taking his time to look over the space that’s been his home away from home for the past year. His eyes catch on the record player in the corner, and he smiles thinking of how perfect it’d look in Dan’s flat. It’s been in the background of so many of their important moments. Phil reckons he’d like it to be there for a whole lot more.

“Actually,” he says, turning back to Martyn, “there is one thing I’d like to keep.”


End file.
